At the SACME fall meeting held in Boston Nov. 6, Robert Watson, MD, explained the Association for American Medical Colleges new Institute for Improvement in Medical Education, which is based on a report drawn up by 10 deans who were tasked with creating a new vision of med ed.

Nancy Davis, PhD, director, division of CME with the American Academy of Family Physicians, presented some of what AAFP has been doing to move CME forward at the SACME meeting Nov. 6 in Boston.

Like the AMA, AAFP has been concentrating on evidence-based CME, point of care/just in time learning, and physician performance measurement. Note that AAFP accredits activities, not providers.

Click here for the December issue of the Alliance for CME Almanac. There’s yet another rehash of the new ACCME Standards for Commercial Support conflicts of interest documents, plus some interesting articles on CME credit for family physicians, and what the medical school and health system providers sections have been up to.

On a totally different note, I just found out that I’ll be able to attend the Alliance’s annual conference in January–wahoo! I’ve never been, but I hear so many good things about it that I can’t wait. I hope to see many of you there!

For those who can’t make it, I hope to blog it endlessly, as I have been with the fall Society for Academic CME meeting–I still can’t believe I got so much out of a one-day meeting. The Alliance may just kill me, if it’s as content-rich as I think it will be. I’m just glad this blog wasn’t up and running when I went to the CME Congress last spring, which was the best CME meeting I’ve been to so far, but would have required volumes of blogging to do it justice!

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At the SACME fall meeting Nov. 6 in Boston, the AMA s PRA policy head Charles Willis talked about the AMA s performance improvement pilot, which started in August 2001. The project s point is to find out how docs can efficiently and effectively accrue AMA PRA category 1 credit for PMI activities basically, how to integrate QA activities into CME activities.

I just heard today that at least two medical societies have been doing something a little extreme with their exhibitors: Making them pay surcharges to serve cappuccino, espresso, or smoothies at their booths. This was supposedly a sponsorship situation with four opportunities (two for cappuccino/espresso, two for smoothies) for exhibitors to pay thousands of dollars to serve these beverages to those who come to their booths. Only those lucky four exhibitors who pay can serve the stuff at their booths.

I ve always thought that, as long as you abide by the organizer s and exhibit hall s rules (and, of course, the FDA s), how you market your products is up to you, and most everybody offers something to eat and/or drink. What s next, a surcharge on bottled water? Hershey s Kisses?

Enough of my ranting. The Healthcare Convention and Exhibitors Association issued this statement in response:

The Accreditation Council for CME just unveiled its new look, which is much cleaner and easier to navigate than before, I think.

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The Society for Neuroscience is breaking attendance records in San Diego this week, according to a press release. We’re talking 31,000 attendees and more than 60,000 room nights here. My husband is at the show, and he said last night that the trade show floor was hopping, too. The only thing that concerns me was, as he stood on the roof of the convention center talking to me on his cellphone, he was commenting on the container ships close by. Call me paranoid, but this seems to be a bit of a security risk, allowing these ships so close to the center where 31,000 people are gathered.

But the good news is that about 40 percent of the attendees are international, which indicates that all the recent passport and border rules aren’t keeping people from coming to this prestigious event.

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AMA president John C. Nelson, MD, MPH, has this this to say about the grant it recently received from the Department of Homeland Security for its disaster preparedness course.

He’s proud of the program, and, in my opinion, rightly so. I hope more providers are looking at ways they can similarly prepare their delegates for a disaster, whether man-made or natural.

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The almost 50,000 medical students who belong to the American Medical Student Association are being urged to join in on a national campaign called The Amnesty Campaign. The idea is to collect everything that pharma has doled out to them from pens and Post-it notes to mugs, calendars. According to a press release:

“The campaign is the first in a number of events leading up to National PharmFree Day, which will be recognized on December 8, 2004. National PharmFree Day will serve as a day of action where medical students, residents and physicians alike to speak out against the pharmaceutical industry’s biased marketing practices.



“ The pharmaceutical industry has ramped up its spending on marketing dramatically over the past few years, says Brian Palmer, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., AMSA national president.  As physicians in training, AMSA believes that prescribing decisions should be made on evidence instead of marketing. The collective effect of these giveaways is to drive up drug costs and hinder evidence-based medicine.

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The Alliance for CME just announced that you can pre-order the 4th Edition of the Best Practices ($90.00 + $20.00 Priority Shipping & Handling for members; $105.00 + $20.00 priority shipping & handling for nonmembers.)

According to the press release: “The book includes some 1,377 pages of exemplary practices of ACCME accredited providers in areas that are fundamental to the delivery of successful CME in accordance with the Essential Areas, Standards and Policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME). Examples represent commendable practices from the ACCME 2003 self-studies. Each section identifies the areas of performance, the language describing the exemplary findings for performance, and then provides examples of the CME practices.”

To pre-order the book, go to www.accme-assn.org/files/4thed.pdf.