European CME: Recent Changes Made to the EACCME 3.0 Accreditation Criteria and Platform Restricting Satellite Symposium, Communication Companies and Event Sponsorships

Recently, the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education  (EACCME) made changes to its platform and criteria for continuing medical education (CME) credit. Celeste Kolanko of Liberum IME and Eugene Pozniak of Siyemi Learning joined Thomas Sullivan, Senior Vice President at Clinical Education Alliance at a CME Coalition webinar, to speak about the changes in European CME and what it means for CME providers.

The EACCME is not related to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) in the United States, but instead is an operating division of the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS) and is recognized by the American Medical Association (AMA). However, the EACCME and CME credits as a whole operate very differently than in the United States. For one, while it is called the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, the credit is not accepted by all countries within the EU. For example, France and Germany only accept their own national credits, not credits from the EACCME, as CME is enforced on a national level in Europe; there is no pan European authority when it comes to medicine, medical training, or accreditation for CME credits. In Germany health professionals are given a stipend for participating in CE activities and the activities are reported back to the government by the healthcare provider.

Additionally, certain areas allow for self-certification of CME, meaning if the provider attends an educational activity and considered it CME, they can self-certify and receive credit for the activity. This means that individual learners will need to understand what the requirements are under their own licensing body and adhere to those requirements.

Therefore, while accreditation does not seem to be as necessary as it is in the United States, it does help to have accreditation because it helps to show providers that the content may be of a higher quality and is independent.

For EACCME credit, education providers submit each activity to the EACCME for approval.  According to our panelists, the process can last anywhere from 6-12 weeks to receive accreditation decisions.

In Europe there are several accrediting alternatives to EACCME including the European Board for Accreditation of Continuing Education for Health Professionals (EBAC®) EBAC which accredit organizations similar to the ACCME process which is recognized by the American Medical Association to provide CME credit.

In June 2023 the EACCME, instituted several significant changes to their accreditation system, these included:

• “Medical Communications Agencies” — promotional agencies (which can include medical advertising agencies) working directly for pharma, are no longer permitted to be considered legitimate providers of CME
• “Sponsorship” “funding” — removal of references to grants
• Satellite symposia at annual meetings are no longer accreditable venue for accredited programs
• “Co-development” — healthcare organizations must lead the activities
• Removal of opportunities for sponsorship outside of the protected CME venue, limited to exhibit hall only

According to our panelists, in Europe, they have medical communication agencies that tend to be purely promotional agencies that work for the pharmaceutical industry – under their guidance and direction. These medical communications agencies are often different from the legitimate CME providers who provide impartial and valuable CME to medication practitioners.

The way it seems, the EACCME had originally decided to eliminate grants and to substitute instead sponsorship/funding, which often means the supporter will need some kind of benefit (often control over the activities and the content). This raised concern from CME providers, largely because of the concern that sponsorship often refers to a level of control over the activities and content, so EACCME changed it to funding, but there are still references to sponsorship on EACCME’s website.

The EACCME is mandating that any co-developed CME program will need to be led by a health care organization or society. This restricts medical societies and educational providers from leading educational programs.

Additionally, EACCME has noted that it will no longer accredit any type of symposia or other meeting that takes place within any type of Congress. This is likely to make it incredibly difficult for organizations or education providers to develop CME that can be accredited by the EACCME.  New guidance has also removed opportunities for sponsorship outside of protected CME venues.

It is believed that EACCME introduced these changes due to challenges in understanding and processing the diversity of educational programs.

Bandwidth issues and lack of staff have also been speculated as reasons for these changes.

Impact on Congresses & Stakeholders:

The changes could adversely affect the planning and support for educational initiatives in Europe, including independent symposia.

The EACCME has established itself as a key accrediting body, and its decisions can greatly impact medical societies and congresses. Some congresses choose to work exclusively with the EACCME, while others might consider alternative accrediting bodies.

This may also mean that, while in the past, a CME provider could mix accreditations from different bodies, these new restrictions may result in the withdrawal of their accreditation of another accrediting body’s satellite is included. Additionally, the issue of multiple accreditations arises in certain areas (such as Germany) due to different accreditation standards and rules. While it is possible to obtain multiple accreditations for a single activity, the main reason for accreditation should be either to show quality of the program, for points, or for the demonstration of independence.

Hybrid and online programs also had a layer of complexity to the accreditation process. For example, a symposium held in Europe should ideally have credit by EACCME, not ACCME, but with these changing complexities and global access are somewhat blurring the lines.

European accreditation is currently being discussed at the International Academy for CPD Accreditation’s Cologne Consensus Conference and will be discussed at the upcoming European CME Forum in The Hague, The Netherlands, 8-10 November 2023  includes representatives from EACCME.

gCMEp Good Practices is hosting a webinar on EACCME3.0 What’s New What’s Missing? on September 28, 2023 at 7:00a Eastern

The EACCME has now formally joined as a member of IACPDA.

The objective of IACPDA is to promote substantive equivalency of accreditation systems (not credit…. yet). They have 30 members from 27 countries.

The CME Coalition is considering their options to respond to these changes, as many of their members have educational activities in Europe.

We encourage all affected parties to contact the EACCME directly at:accreditation@uems.eu

Because Europe has multiple accrediting bodies, most education organizations are switching to EBAC accreditation.

All new applications for CME credit by EACCME submitted after June 19, 2023, will need to be submitted on the new platform and follow the new criteria.

For a link to the EACCME criteria, templates, and requirements, click here.

For EBAC Accreditation for your activities click here