5 Things that Keep Medical Meeting Managers Up at Night

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1. Growing and Engaging Your Attendee base

• Expand your list of potential attendees to include non-physicians such as nurses, hospitalists, and hospital administrators. Include sessions geared to their needs, and offer credit for different specialties when possible.

• Ask attendees what they want to learn, then give it to them using a hands-on approach to education such as small group discussions and skills workshops.

• Give them lots of networking and interaction opportunities both in sessions and outside formal learning times. Consider offering a special lounge area just for VIPs to mingle, and ask speakers to interact informally with attendees in a learning lounge.

• Offer group rates and scholarship programs for students and international attendees, and offer discounts and perks to “frequent fliers.” Identify future attendees by offering a free half-day to residents. Ramp up the registration fee each year post-residency until they are paying the full freight.

2. Increasing Revenues

• Find new items that can be sponsored, including charging stations, hotel room keys, and Wi-Fi. With so many accreditor, state, and national laws, rules, and requirements around physician/pharma interactions, this can get tricky, though. Which leads to…

• Develop non-pharmaceutical sponsors, which are not covered by the above rules and regs. For example, find a housing vendor to sponsor shuttles. You can still get sponsors for the usual tote bags, lanyards, and parties as well, as long as they aren’t covered in the regulations. You can even charge a sponsor to have a seat at the table during dinearounds, or to host roundtables during a reception. And remember that sponsors can still pay for non-CME satellite symposia.

• Develop virtual products based on conference sessions. You can even have a vendor cover the session taping, then offer them royalties on the sales on the back end.

• Build a product theater in the expo hall and charge vendors a fee for using it for a set amount of time.

• Since smaller conferences are more difficult to find sponsors for, provide a package deal that bundles your large and small conferences for a set fee.

3. Paying for Wi-Fi

• Ask your venue to provide you with a report outlining the bandwidth you actually used during your last meeting. They may not offer it, but it’s worth asking for so you have a better idea of what you really need moving forward. Keep in mind, though, that for an annual meeting, a lot can change bandwidth-wise from year to year as new devices come on the market.

• Go into Internet negotiations armed with knowledge. PCMA attendees said that planners need to either take ownership of the technology skill set needed, or bring the director of IT to the meeting to negotiate that piece for them.

4. Enhancing the Exhibit Hall Experience

• Make the exhibit hall the place to be for fun stuff—like meals and networking events. Another draw is to have Internet hot spots (another sponsorship opportunity) set up on the show floor.

• You can offer all kinds of programming in the expo hall, as long as it is not accredited continuing medical education. Offer education for non-clinicians who are there to do business with the exhibitors. One person said she brought her association journal’s editors to the show floor to do “clinical chats.”

• Hold poster sessions for special interest groups—ask the SIG to appoint an expert who can give a tour of the posters.

• Offer a career center where job seekers and hirers can meet.

5. Complying with Rules and Regs

• This continues to be sticky as each pharma company is interpreting the rules its own way. Talk with your key sponsors and exhibitors to find out what you can do to help them stay compliant with the Open Payments section of the Affordable Care Act, state laws, and their internal policies and procedures.

• Because many healthcare professionals are still unaware of the tracking and reporting requirements of the new Open Payments federal law, consider putting a regulatory FAQ on your Web site that outlines what your exhibitors and sponsors may have to report regarding what they spend on HCPs at your meeting.

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Photo Gallery: 2013 Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions Annual Meeting

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