The Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education recently added tools and resources to its website to support the new Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education. The new Standards for Integrity and Independence – are effective January 1, 2022 and replace the existing Standards for Commercial Support as CPE Standard 5.
The Standards are designed to ensure that accredited continuing education provides healthcare professionals with accurate, balanced, evidence-based information that supports safe and effective patient care. Standard 5 specifically discusses eligibility for ACPE accreditation, including organizations that may be accredited by ACPE (including ambulatory procedure centers, blood banks, health profession membership organizations, rehabilitation centers, and software or game developers) and organizations that cannot be accredited by ACPE (including biomedical startups that have begin a governmental regulatory approval process, device manufacturers or distributors, pharmacy benefit managers, and pharmaceutical companies or distributors).
The first guideline under Standard 5 is to ensure all content is valid, accredited providers are responsible for ensuring that their education is fair and balanced and that any clinical content presented supports safe, effective patient care. This guideline applies to all accredited continuing education.
The second guideline also applies to all accredited continuing education and focuses on preventing commercial bias and marketing in accredited continuing education.
The third guideline requires that accredited providers identify relevant financial relationships between individuals in control of educational content and ineligible companies and manage those relationships to ensure they do not introduce commercial bias into the education. Financial relationships of any dollar amount are considered relevant if the educational content is related to the business lines or products of the ineligible company. This guideline is applicable to all accredited continuing education.
Under the fourth guideline, accredited providers that choose to accept commercial support (financial or in-kind support from ineligible companies) are responsible for ensuring that the education remains independent of the ineligible company and the support does not result in any commercial bias or commercial influence in the education. This guideline only applies to accredited continuing education that receives financial or in-kind support from ineligible companies.
Under the fifth and final guideline, accredited providers are responsible for ensuring that education is separate from the marketing by ineligible companies and from non-accredited education that is offered in conjunction with accredited continuing education. This guideline is only applicable when there is marketing by ineligible companies or non-accredited education associated with the accredited continuing education.
The tools added to help ACPE members make the change to the new Standard 5 include a rubric, transition checklist, and webinar recording.
Each of the resources can be accessed at the link below: