It's unclear how or when the pharmaceutical industry became the new whipping boy for the press and Congress alike. Fair or unfair, this is the new reality, and since CME is largely funded by industry, we can expect the scrutiny to continue — even...
The Accreditation Council for CME has proposed two new positions regarding the Standards for Commercial Support, one of which could have drastic consequences for medical education and communication companies. The first states that providers will...
Anger. Frustration. Finger-pointing. Emotions are running high in the CME community in reaction to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee report on CME. Issued in April, the report expressed strong concerns that the Accreditation Council for CME's...
You've probably heard that the Accreditation Council for CME has proposed a revised definition of commercial interest. The new definition states: “A commercial interest is any proprietary entity producing, marketing, re-selling, distributing or...
Lawrence Sherman Posed an interesting question in his column “Same Time Next Year?” (January/February 2007, page 15) Why do so many of us go to the same meetings year after year? Certainly the collegial environment is a benefit. However, with more...
The United States Senate Committee on Finance issued a big wake-up call to the continuing medical education community on April 25 when it released a report saying that some purportedly independent educational programs are, in reality, veiled...
As I Read the op-ed piece “Does a Drug Firm's Free Lunch Influence Doctors?” (Boston Globe, May 18), I thought, how unusual — this writer actually seems to have a positive attitude about pharmaceutical industry/physician relationships. The piece...
The Senate Finance Committee report on CME, combined with extensive media coverage about the inappropriate relationships between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry, including The New England Journal of Medicine article “A National Survey of...