Some pretty big news came out last week while I was in San Diego for our West Coast Life Sciences Meeting Management Forum: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced a proposed rule designed to increase public awareness of financial relationships between drug and device manufacturers and certain healthcare providers, as required by the Sunshine Act provision of healthcare reform.

From a pharmaceutical/device meeting manager’s perspective (which I got last week in spades, being surrounded by these good folks), no one seemed to be anticipating it making much of a difference in their lives. The biggest issue for them was CMS’s delaying the collection of data on physician spend from Jan. 1, 2012, until after final regulations are issued.

I heard over and over again that if they weren’t already tracking physician and other healthcare worker spend as a requirement of a corporate integrity agreement, they have been working since healthcare reform passed to get a system up and running. In fact, a survey of the forum’s participants found that 88 percent had a system already to track their spend on physicians and other healthcare professionals, and 76 percent were either already testing their system or were confident that their system was ready to roll with the new year.

But that’s about as far as I’ve had time to get with CMS’ announcement. I’m not sure whether it’s a blessing (so thankful someone’s keeping on top of all this!) or a curse (ain’t no way I can keep up with the flow of information the dude puts out, much less beat him to the punch, so I have to live with being continually scooped!), but Tom Sullivan has been churning and burning all this up on his Policy and Medicine blog. Keep in mind that he comes at it from a pro-collaboration perspective, but he provides a great overview of possible affects this announcement could have on the CME community. Some posts to check out:

Physician Payment Sunshine Act: CMS Proposed Rule - Impact on Continuing Medical Education, Medical Societies and Patient Organizations

Physician Payment Sunshine Act: CMS Proposed Regulations — Public Posting, Data Submission and Correction

Physician Payment Sunshine Act: CMS Proposed Regulations Delayed Reporting for Clinical Trials, Penalties and Preemption

Physician Payment Sunshine Act: CMS Proposed Regulations – The Cost for Sunshine

Physician Payment Sunshine Act: CMS Proposed Rule Overview

Physician Payment Sunshine Act: CMS Releases Proposed Regulations

Update:Daniel Carlat, MD, has a different take on how the new rules could affect CME (namely, he’s ecstatic that the language could include faculty honoraria in reportable income) on his Carlat Psychiatry blog.

Check out this article in the New York Times about how medical schools are screening potential students for their communication skills and their ability to work in a team-based environment.

I know Boston restaurants have been clamoring to repeal the two-year-old Massachusetts Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Manufacturer Code of Conduct law, saying it’s hurt their business hugely to lose the doctor dinners. The code restricts informational presentations accompanied by a meal that are sponsored by medical device or drug companies to medical offices, hospitals, or device training facilities—no restaurants allowed (others blame the falloff in restaurant business to the economy, not the law). Economic development folks also wanted it gone, saying it’s been scaring off pharma and bio business: the code also bans companies from providing entertainment or recreational items of any value to HCPs, and giveaways, including pens, coffee mugs, and gift cards, along with fairly strict reporting and disclosure rules around any financial interaction between docs and drug companies.

It sounds like the Mass. House heard them all the way up on Beacon Hill: Yesterday it voted 145-4 to pass an economic development law that included chucking the gift ban. Now it has to be reconciled with an already-passed Senate bill, but I’m guessing that, the economy will trump the perceived need to rein in pharma marketing. My prediction: Given the current economic climate in the Bay state, the pharma gift ban won’t survive whatever final form the law takes.

It seems like just yesterday I was asking about CME designed to improve what, for lack of a better term, I’d call customer service and how it can affect patient outcomes. Then today I run across this week’s Grand Rounds, which is focused on customer service in healthcare. While the posts I clicked into weren’t directly focused on CME per se, check out this one from Mastering Data Management.

Among the many benefits of the Louisiana Rural Health Information Exchange the post covers is that it enables rural HCPs to participate remotely in CME. Nice!

As much as poor Gardiner Harris (medical reporter for the New York Times) gets bashed at almost every CME conference I’ve been to, you have to admit that he tries pretty hard to get things right. But so many mainstream media reporters just don’t understand the medical/scientific (much less CME) news they write about. Check out this post by Joe Rominiecki on the Acronym blog, where he points to both this excellent article — Bad medical writing hurts public health — and proposes that associations take a more active role in ensuring reporters get it right when they report findings from major medical conferences.

I think he might be onto something…

Here’s an interesting post from the Crikey Health Blog: Evidence-based medicine or marketing-based medicine? It’s well worth a read, particularly since CME is so focused on teaching EBM nowadays.

I got this press release this morning and, while acknowledging that in fact I would rank things pretty similarly, still found it a bit shocking for some reason:

Google second only to doctors as source of health information

Capstrat-Public Policy poll analyzes how people seek medical answers;

Web searches popular, but advocacy groups more trusted

RALEIGH, N.C., May 2010 – A national survey finds Americans rely highly on Google searches as a source of health care information. The survey, conducted in April 2010 by Capstrat and Public Policy Polling, finds 22 percent of respondents consider Google searches “influential” in seeking health information. The search engine ranked second only to doctors (44 percent) in reported influence and was named more than twice as often as nurses, pharmacists, advocacy groups and friends or family members.

After asking where people turn to for health information, the poll asked which sources they trust. Health advocacy groups emerged as a particularly trusted source of online health information: 71 percent judged Web content of such groups “somewhat reliable” or “extremely reliable,”considerably higher than the 59 percent who felt that way about organic Google searches.

Online communities aren’t yet a major influencer in health care. Only 12 percent of respondents used online forums in their last search for health information, and only 37 percent considered forums “somewhat reliable” or “extremely reliable.” Of those who did look to online communities, the number one reason was their around-the-clock availability.

The survey revealed significant differences in the way various segments of society use online communities. African Americans and Gen-Xers are significantly more likely to consider them reliable sources of information. Younger respondents were also much less likely to see pharmacists as reliable sources of information, perhaps reflecting the more impersonal relationship they have with chain pharmacists compared to their parents’ long-standing reliance on the mom-and-pop operations that used to dominate the landscape.

“We found it interesting that popularity and trust don’t always go hand-in-hand,” said Karen Albritton, Capstrat president. “People are quick to search the Web for health information, just as they use it for most other questions today. But when it comes time to make a decision, their trust resides where it always has – in people. This insight can be instructive to organizations working to combine health expertise with new strategies for communication.”

Other notable findings:

· 32 percent of African Americans cited Google as the most influence source for health decisions, compared to only 15 percent of Hispanics who found Google influential

· 63 percent of women considered Google reliable on health, compared to 53 percent of men

· 53 percent of respondents ages 30 to 45 found online forums to be reliable, compared to only 37 percent of respondents ages 46 to 65

· 65 percent found a phone conversation with a nurse to be somewhat or extremely reliable

For a white paper on these results, please visit http://o.capstr.at/t. To view complete survey results, visit http://o.capstr.at/x.

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.

Had to scramble to put this article together yesterday, but at least we got in a few thoughts on how the healthcare reform bill that passed on Sunday and is scheduled to be signed into law by the President today could effect pharma meetings for HCPs and CME. But I’d really like to know what you think. Please drop a comment below or e-mail your thoughts to me. I won’t share them without your OK, but inquiring minds want to know…

Thanks to Thomas Sullivan at Policy and Medicine for outlining the Physician Payment Sunshine Provisions of the healthcare reform bill that passed yesterday. I heard from many at our Pharmaceutical Meeting Management Forum last week that many companies — particularly the larger ones — have already been tracking their annual per-physician spend (including speaker fees, travel, etc.), and not just for their physicians from Massachusetts and Vermont, in anticipation of some version of the Sunshine provisions being passed.

If anyone has any thoughts on how this will affect pharma meetings for HCPs and/or CME, drop me a note. I’m also curious how the bill overall might affect CME, outside of the transparency provisions. Will it push the CME enterprise closer to a performance-improvement model? Are there other CME or pharma meeting-related consequences, intentional or otherwise, that you see stemming from this bill? Let’s talk.