According to a recent report the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI) and the Coalition for Healthcare Communication, titled “Industry Support for Continuing Education of Health Care Professionals: An Evidence-Based Evaluation,” doctors and patients are benefiting greatly from commercially supported medical education.
Furthermore, the report asserts that the primary beneficiaries of these industry-supported efforts include minorities, and the poor. The report also acknowledges that commercially supported continuing medical educations (CME) are critical to keeping doctors informed about the latest advances in medicine.
Interestingly, this report comes at a crucial time when the issue of health care reform and the overhaul of the health care system, both nationally and statewide, are making numerous attempts to bar drug and medical device companies from sponsoring CME programs.
This report, seemingly the first of many to come, poses another legitimate obstacle for legislators and public officials to address before attempting to pass any comprehensive measures.
Recently, industry sponsored CME programs have come under attack for their appearance of corruption and conflicts of interest. According to Peter Pitts, President of CMPI, “These critics ignore studies that have shown that physicians benefit from all privately supported continuing medical education, especially those that focus on spreading advances in treating complex diseases to primary care doctors.”
In addition, professional associations such as the American College of Cardiology have also expressed their agreement with the CMPI report. In fact, Jack Lewin, M.D., the Chief Executive Officer of the American College of Cardiology recently acknowledged that while CME programs guarantee the highest level of transparency and scrutiny, if doctors “were not to have these additional services which we believe rapidly advance the education of our members and the translation of science to the point of care, the patients and doctors who serve them will be harmed."
The report also addresses how continued efforts to limit industry relations with CME will exacerbate health outcome disparities for the populations already with the most critical need. For example, according to Robert Goldberg, Vice President of CMPI, "Curtailing CME would deepen health disparities in America and send a signal that patients of color are less important to the elites driving this debate than their desire to damage drug companies " because many industry-support CME programs support physicians who work in traditionally underserved populations.
Seemingly, advocates declare that restricting industry support for CME is not only “censorship of commercial health information,” it is unconstitutional and bad public policy. As a result, Harry Sweeney, Chairman of the Coalition for Health Communication noted that “If scientists avoid such research for fear of tainting their reputations, then medical innovation — and future patients — will suffer," especially when many research projects require corporate sponsorship.
Ultimately the limitations surrounding industry supported CME according to many physicians “is nothing less than a suppression of free speech that will make our health care system dumb and dumber.”
With health care reform surely to consume the next 100 days of the Obama Administration and Congress, politicians and the Administration would do well to acknowledge the rights of doctors and benefits to patients that industry support of CME provides.
Full Report: Industry Support for Continuing Education of Health Care Professionals: An Evidence-Based Evaluation