Page views are passe, as are measures of time spent on the e-CME site, according a lively and very informative discussion going on now at the CME LinkedIn group. I won’t even attempt to summarize it here — if you aren’t a member, I highly recommend joining the group. This e-conversation alone is worth the time spent to register for anyone who provides Web-based CME.

I just now heard that Debra Gist, MPH, FACME, one of my favorite CME specialists — who also happens to run one of the best CME blogs around — has been hired as the new director of education with The American Academy of Dermatology. Congratulations to the AAD, and to Debbie!

The idea of nominating Harvard Medical School professor Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services first came up a few weeks ago, but now it’s official: President Obama nominated Berwick yesterday. I’ve been a bit of a fan since I first saw his “Escape Fire” video several years ago:

He still has to be confirmed by the Senate, which may be no easy feat. I personally don’t see why Berwick, who heads the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, couldn’t do the job pretty darn well.

I wasn’t able to attend the SACME spring meeting, but I did find this post about it to give a small taste of how it went.

Pfizer may be the most recent, but it’s in good company as more pharma companies –GSK, Lilly, Merck — begin to post on the Web what they have paid to physician consultants and speakers. While some are being forced to do it as part of their settlements over illegal marketing activities, others are just being proactive: The healthcare reform law that passed last month requires all pharma and medical device companies to set up these databases in 2013.

So, is this enough transparency? Seemingly not, according to this article in the New York Times, which says: “But it can be hard to add up the money for one doctor from several sources, identify the biggest recipients or list them all for a hospital or a city, without laborious work by a computer expert.”

The Professional Convention Management Association had an interesting writeup of a survey it did in 2009 on how the PhRMA and AdvaMed codes may be changing the way healthcare meetings are planned. While the sample size was really small (if I calculated 43 percent of 44 right, around 19 respondents), it’s still interesting that more than two-thirds said the codes had an effect on the commercial support they received for their meetings. Fifty-nine percent used commercial support for annual meeting educational sessions/courses; 63 percent used them for regional educational sessions; 53 percent applied grant funds to online education and research grants.

The largest percentage — 37 percent — said they received more than $1 million/year in commercial support.