Yudu - April 2012

On_the_Web Read these previous Convene articles on CME funding and reporting:

“The Health-Care Law and You”: bit.ly/Convene-Sunshine “‘Stronger Than Concern & Weaker Than Panic’”: bit.ly/Convene-codes

ket the landscape with everythingwe could think of,” Johnson said. “Now we’re more strategic and targeted.” Another obvious, but too often ignored, piece of advice is

to study funders’ clinical goals and interests. Most companies post their educational objectives and priorities online. “If you have a better understanding of their educational goals for the year,” Hathaway Stella said, “you can be more strategic about submitting grant requests.” Pfizer, for example, recently announced that it was reorgan- izing its medical education group into two tracks. The major-

“Collaboration with academic institutions is likely to curry favor with pharmaceutical companies, because it broadens the reach of the educational activity.”

ity of grants—90 percent—will now be allocated through a request-for-proposal (RFP) process and will focus on a nar- rower group of clinical interests. Even though the company previously listed its clinical areas, said Maureen Doyle-Scharff, senior director of Pfizer’s Medical Education Group, too many proposals were off-target. A majority of those were rejected,

TIMELINE: INDUSTRY-BACKED CME

The nonprofit Institute of Medicine releases Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice, a report that calls for an end to educational grants from pharmaceu- tical and medical-device manufacturers and for a new fund- ing mechanism “free of industry influence.”

2010

Pfizer, as part of the 2009 settlement, begins posting pay- ments made to health-care professionals — for meals, com- pensation, payments, and “transfers of value” of $25 or more— to its website. In 2011, the value is lowered to $10 or more.

and the process was a waste of both parties’ time. Rather than going it alone, some CME providers are team-

ing up to go after industry grants—including The Endocrine Society, which has focused on collaboration with other med- ical societies. Johnson said: “We’re lookingfor collaborative projects where we can engage in larger initiatives that bigger organizations may be able to help pull together.” HRS, meanwhile, has partnered successfully with the larger

American College of Cardiology (ACC). “We’ve been success- ful in developing content on cardiac rhythm management and atrial fibrillation to disseminate via ACC,” Scheck said. “We’re basically the content providers, funded by industry, with the money raised collaboratively with ACC.” Though MECCs are cut off from CME grants by pharma

giants Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (suspicion of bias has always hungheaviest around MECCs because they don’t have members to answer to), that doesn’t mean they can’t partner with a medical society or other CME provider. “We are look- ingat collaboration with medical education companies,” Scheck said, “where the Heart Rhythm Society might be the content provider and we’re putting our Good Housekeeping seal on a program they [MECCs] do.” Likewise, a MECC can help an association reach a broader

audience and provide more learningenvironments (local or web-based, for example)—somethingthat funders look for, Sullivan said. But don’t partner just for the sake of partnering. “You need to find a partner with a complementary skill set,” Sullivan said. “It has to be the right partner.” Gambill recommends that physician organizations explore collaborations with universities and medical schools, which are