The 'shame' of Continuing Medical Education

From GoozNews.

Nearly every state in the nation requires physicians take a certain number of continuing medical education courses every year to maintain their licenses. In highly a complex and rapidly changing field like medicine where licensed practitioners are often called on to make life and death decisions, government has an obligation to ensure that the people who make those calls are up to date on the best practices in medicine.

But who supports continuing medical education (CME)? The field, a self-regulated collage of medical schools, medical journals, professional societies and for-profit CME providers, some of which double as drug and device industry communications firms, now gets more than half its $2.4 billion in revenue from industry. And that financial support has turned what was supposed to be a consumer safeguard into a thinly disguised extension of industry marketing practices. . . .

It's the only reform that matters. The public has every reason to expect that a profession whose median income for its lowest-paid specialties is well into six figures pay for its own continuing education and not rely on the backdoor baksheesh of industry support. And to the extent this would be a burden on physicians, Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers can raise their reimbursement rates to pay for it. After all, medical consumers are already paying for this activity through higher prices to the drug and device companies that make the "grants." Why not do so directly and end industry's intermediary role?

If the [Accreditation Council on Continuing Medical Education] can't see its way clear to enact such a rule, then perhaps the time has come for states to act. All it will take is a few large states passing laws disallowing CME credits from industry-supported education activities to put an end to it. Industry's takeover of this crucial component of keeping physicians up to date on the latest in medicine has got to stop because it undermines the notion that evidence and not marketing is driving the care that patients receive.