Pharmaceutical Company Support for Continuing Medical Education
Continuing medical education (CME), also known as independent medical education (IME), helps physicians and other medical professionals to obtain information and insights that can contribute to the improvement of patient care, and therefore, financial support from companies is appropriate. Such financial support for CME is intended to support education on a full range of treatment options and not to promote a particular medicine. Accordingly, a company should separate its CME grant-making functions from its sales and marketing departments. In addition, a company should develop objective criteria for making CME grant decisions to ensure that the program funded by the company is a bona fide educational program and that the financial support is not an inducement to prescribe or recommend a particular medicine or course of treatment.
Since the giving of any subsidy directly to a healthcare professional by a company may be viewed as an inappropriate cash gift, any financial support should be given to the CME provider, which, in turn, can use the money to reduce the overall CME registration fee for all participants. The company should respect the independent judgment of the CME provider and should follow standards for commercial support established by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) or other entity that may accredit the CME. When companies underwrite CME, responsibility for and control over the selection of content, faculty, educational methods, materials, and venue belongs to the organizers of the conferences or meetings in accordance with their guidelines. The company should not provide any advice or guidance to the CME provider, even if asked by the provider, regarding the content or faculty for a particular CME program funded by the company.
Financial support should not be offered for the costs of travel, lodging, or other personal expenses of non-faculty healthcare professionals attending CME, either directly to the individuals participating in the event or indirectly to the events sponsor (except as set out in Section 9 below). Similarly, funding should not be offered to compensate for the time spent by healthcare professionals participating in the CME event.
A company should not provide meals directly at CME events, except that a CME provider at its own discretion may apply the financial support provided by a company for a CME event to provide meals for all participants.