On the heels of the Accreditation Council for CME’s 2005 Data Report comes this study from the Cutting Edge. Among the findings:

-Pharma spending on CME will continue to increase in 2007, or at least hold at steady spending levels, in 2007 for 70 percent of the companies surveyed. However, 29 percent said their CME budgets would decrease next year.

-Pharma is spending more on commercial support for live meetings (78 percent) than for any other types of CME.

It’ll be interesting to put this data next to ACCME’s and see what shakes out, but it sounds like they came up with similar results. What the press release didn’t address is the rate of increase in commercial support, which from ACCME’s data has been slowing over the past several years. It did say, however, “Many CME providers feared that funding would drop sharply in the coming years.”

Some updates from Anne Taylor-Vaisey’s Anne T-V’s Blog:

Selling Sickness [book reviews]

The James Lind Library: Why fair tests of treatments in health care are needed

Related to these items, see also

 

Book Reviews

Industry & Health Care

Evidence-Based Health Care

E-CME providers, check out this article: Who invented e-learning computing? (from CNN). A snip:

Blackboard Inc. has been awarded a patent establishing its claims to some of the basic features of the software that powers online education.



The patent, awarded to the Washington, D.C.-based company in January but announced last month, has prompted an angry backlash from the academic computing community.

Could this have an impact on e-CME, which is finally starting to gain some traction, according to the latest ACCME Data Report?

Many thanks to my anonymous reader who doesn’t want to get sued by the company for the pointer!

From this AP article:

Schering-Plough Corp. on Tuesday agreed to pay $435 million and plead guilty to conspiracy to settle a federal investigation into marketing of its drugs for unapproved uses and overcharging Medicaid for certain drugs.



Kenilworth, N.J.-based Schering-Plough said it will pay $255 million to resolve civil aspects of the previously disclosed investigation. A subsidiary, Schering Sales Corp., will pay a criminal fine of $180 million and plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to make false statements to the government. The agreement is subject to court approval.

Among the changes implemented since this off-label marketing occurrence, the company has prohibited its sales reps from becoming involved in the CME granting process.

Congratulations to Zelda Gilliam, who recently was appointed CME compliance manager with Medical Education Solutions Group. Here’s more, from a press release:

In this capacity, Zelda provides assurance that MESG conducts business activities in full compliance with all Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and Office of the Inspector General (OIG) guidelines, policies, and procedures.



Prior to joining MESG, Zelda served as the CME accreditation/compliance officer at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She was recently appointed an accreditation surveyor for the ACCME.

http://www.medadnews.com/News/Index.cfm?articleid=368593

This one sounds interesting: Development and evaluation of a cultural competency training curriculum, by David H Thom, Miguel D Tirado, Tommy L Woon, and Melen R McBride, BMC Medical Education 2006, 6:38

Background

Increasing the cultural competence of physicians and other health care providers has been suggested as one mechanism for reducing health disparities by improving the quality of care across racial/ethnic groups. While cultural competency training for physicians is increasingly promoted, relatively few studies evaluating the impact of training have been published.

Methods

We recruited 53 primary care physicians at 4 diverse practice sites and enrolled 429 of their patients with diabetes and/or hypertension. Patients completed a baseline survey which included a measure of physician culturally competent behaviors. Cultural competency training was then provided to physicians at 2 of the sites. At all 4 sites, physicians received feedback in the form of their aggregated cultural competency scores compared to the aggregated scores from other physicians in the practice. The primary outcome at 6 months was change in the Patient-Reported Physician Cultural Competence (PRPCC) score; secondary outcomes were changes in patient trust, satisfaction, weight, systolic blood pressure, and glycosylated hemoglobin. Multiple analysis of variance was used to control for differences patient characteristics and baseline levels of the outcome measure between groups.

Results

Patients had a mean of 2.8 + 2.2 visits to the study physician during the study period. Changes in all outcomes were similar in the “Training + Feedback” group compared to the “Feedback Only” group (PRPCC: 3.7 vs.1.8; trust: -0.7 vs. -0.2 ; satisfaction: 1.9 vs. 2.5; weight: -2.5 lbs vs. -0.7 lbs; systolic blood pressure: 1.7 mm Hg vs. 0.1 mm Hg; glycosylated hemoglobin 0.02% vs. 0.07%; p = NS for all).

Conclusion

The lack of measurable impact of physician training on patient-reported and disease-specific outcomes in the current has several possible explanations, including the relatively limited nature of the intervention. We hope that the current study will help provide a basis for future studies, using more intensive interventions with different provider groups.

Link to full article here

The Alliance for CME is offering a series of hour-long webinars this fall, free to the first 125 Alliance members who sign up (after those 125 slots are filled, members can still listen in for a “nominal fee,” and they will be archived and available to everyone afterwards). The lineup:

Educational Outcomes Measurement: What We’ve Learned, What’s Ahead* (September 13, 2006 at 2:00 PM ET, 1:00 PM CT, 12:00 PM MT, 11:00 AM PT)

Outcomes Measurement and Return on Education: What Are They and How Can I See Results? * (September 18, 2006 at 2:00 PM ET, 1:00 PM CT, 12:00 PM MT, 11:00 AM PT) Special Offer Applies

The Alliance Forum 2006: Grantsmanship: Pfizer, Inc. Pharmaceuticals (September 26, 2006 at 3:00 PM ET, 2:00 PM CT, 1:00 PM MT, 12:00 PM PT)

Resolving Conflict of Interest Without Exclusion: Best Practices from the CME Enterprise * (October 4, 2006 at 3:00 PM ET, 2:00 PM CT, 1:00 PM MT, 12:00 PM PT) Special Offer Applies

Fraud, Funding, and the First Amendment: How Did CME Get Caught Up in Washington Health Care Debates* (October 16, 2006 at 3:00 PM ET, 2:00 PM CT, 1:00 PM MT, 12:00 PM PT) Special Offer Applies

Commercial Support: Riding the Wave of Regulation and Maintaining Valid and Balanced CME (November 9, 2006 at 3:00 PM ET, 2:00 PM CT, 1:00 PM MT, 12:00 PM PT)

Click here to register, or call (205) 824-1355.

You have to check this one out: “Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism,” Holmes D, Murray SJ, Perron A, Rail G. Int J Evid Based Healthc 2006; 4: 180-186. A snip:

Drawing in part on the work of the late French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the evidence-based movement in the

health sciences is outrageously exclusionary and dangerously normative with regards to scientific knowledge. As such, we assert that the evidence-based movement in health sciences constitutes a good example of microfascism at play in the contemporary scientific arena. The philosophical work of Deleuze and Guattari1 proves to be useful in showing how health sciences are colonised (territorialised) by an all-encompassing scientific research paradigm - that of post-positivism - but also and foremost in showing the process by which a dominant ideology comes to exclude alternative forms of knowledge, therefore acting as a fascist structure.

If you’re like me, you’ll agree with this post by Roy Poses on Health Care Renewal. I would add to his rant, but there really isn’t anything more to say. If anyone has an opposing view, please let me know.

From Anne Taylor-Vaisey: There are three articles of possible interest in the September issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Although a subscription is required to retrieve full text, the journal’s archives are available at no cost from 1997-2004.

 

Read more here

 

Anne also has made an index for the adult/continuing/health education category on her blog. You can access it here. Thanks, Anne, for making all our lives a little easier!

Michael Moore’s latest movie about the healthcare industry has pharma knee-deep in fear, according to this article. A snip:

AdAge.com claims that the pharmaceutical industry is attempting to discredit Moore’s film by trying to spin the filmmaker as biased and one-sided. Ken Johnson, senior vice president for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), says America needs a “thoughtful and well-researched” investigation into America’s healthcare problems, and insists Moore’s film won’t provide that.



But consumer health advocate Mike Adams disagrees. “Big Pharma is the king of spin and propaganda,” he says. “And drug companies will paint anything as ‘biased’ if it doesn’t bow down to the lies, distortions and fraud being promoted by the industry. Big Pharma is not merely afraid of Michael Moore, they’re afraid of anything resembling honest scrutiny or investigative journalism,” he added.

After all the build-up, I’m looking forward to seeing if this movie lives up (or down) to its hype. If it truly is investigative journalism, it could be great. If it’s just a smear campaign, I doubt it’ll have much impact. Frankly, I’d be more worried if I were in the hospital and HMO world than pharma—from what I’ve read, that’s what he’s really targeting this time around. (Thanks, once again, to the fabulous Deb for the pointer!)