Saving Certified Continuing Medical Education (CME)
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SPRINGFIELD, N.J., July 9 Adding to the issues of medicalinsurance, availability of healthcare and physician reimbursement, actions arein motion by the American Medical Association's Council on Ethical andJudicial Affairs (CEJA) and proponents to eliminate commercial support ofcertified CME. Certified CME is part of a system which ensures that newinformation is communicated to physicians so that they may be as current aspossible and maintain licensure to practice medicine. Proponents indicate thattheir efforts are due to the possibility for bias and other potentialconflicts of interest in commercially-supported CME; however, a review ofliterature commissioned by the Accreditation Council for Continuing MedicalEducation (ACCME) which accredits providers of CME found 'no evidence tosupport or refute the assertion that support biases CME'. In a recent poll 92%of the consumers of the CME system, physicians, disagreed with the Committee'scall to end commercial support of CME. Industry sources currently account forover a billion dollars of financial aid to the CME system every year.Withdrawing this financial aid would likely overwhelm what system remains andfill the subsequent vacuum with a dramatic increase in promotional activitiesand Direct-to-Consumer advertising. In an effort to preserve the availabilityand quality of Certified CME a petition was posted yesterday at (PleaseCopy/Paste the following URL into your internet browser)http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-certified-continuing-medical-education.html
