Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16836
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: Electronic Source
Silverman E
House Bill Wants Pharma To Disclose CME Funding
Pharmalot 2009 Nov 13
http://www.pharmalot.com/2009/11/house-bill-wants-pharma-to-disclose-cme-funding/#more-19838
Full text:
The health care reform bill passed by the House would force drugmakers to disclose how much they spend on continuing medical education classes for docs, although the Senate version doesn’t include such a requirement, according to The Wall Street Journal. The paper notes this comes as for-profit CME firms experience falling revenue.
The Senate’s Special Committee on Aging, meanwhile, is investigating industry-funded CME, the Journal continues, and John Kamp, who heads the Coalition for Healthcare Communication, wrote Kohl the committee “should consider elimination of certified CME reporting in all versions of health-care reform bills because they are unneeded, redundant and needlessly expensive.” The group is sponsored by the American Association of Advertising Agencies; some agencies have units that run CME classes.
Industry funding of CME is criticized by some for unduly influencing medical practice. “The vast majority of industry-funded CME programs are simply infomercials for the funding company’s latest drug or device,” Dan Carlat, a Massachusetts psychiatrist and an associate professor at Tufts University’s medical school, tells the Journal, noting he owns a CME company that doesn’t take industry money.
Meanwhile, the paper reports that industry funding for CME in general, including seminars held by nonprofit groups and hospitals, dropped 14 percent last year to $1 billion, according to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, which found industry payments to for-profit CME firms dropped 22 percent last year to $463 million from $594 million a year earlier. The Journal reminds us tht Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline will no longer directly fund for-profit CME firms.
