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