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AMA'S CEJA REPORT
Documents, Facts, Opinions, Calls to Action
Related Documents:
AMA Urged To Revise or Reject Flawed Committee Proposal on CME
The Coalition for Healthcare Communication and the leading CME professional organization, the North American Association of Medical Education and Communication Companies (NAAMECC), issued a call on May 22nd urging members of the American Medical Association to revise or reject an ethics proposal based on faulty logic and erroneous reports. See the letter here.
Overview by Coalition Executive Director John Kamp published on Medscape's Web site (Free registration required to view on Medscape's site.)
Sample letter you can send to AMA members AMA Chapter Addresses
MORE INFORMATION:
Summary update - June 12, 2008
Responses from Organizations:
Individual Responses:
Update
On Sunday, June 15, the Constitution and By-laws Reference Committee of the American Medical Association (AMA) will gather to discuss and vote on a report recommending that individual physicians and institutions of medicine, such as medical schools, teaching hospitals, and professional organizations (including state and medical specialty societies), must not accept industry funding to support professional education activities, including certified CME activities.
The report, recently released by the AMA Council on Judicial and Ethical Affairs (CEJA) and entitled Industry Support of Professional Education in Medicine, would serve to undermine its stated goal of improving the quality of certified professional education to ensure "that current and future generations of physicians acquire, maintain, and apply the values, knowledge, skills, and judgment essential for quality patient care." Instead, this change in the CME dynamic would in all likelihood:
- Significantly impact the capacity of academic institutions, hospitals, medical education companies, and professional societies to provide certified CME
- Diminish education quantity and quality, potentially resulting in increased clinical mistakes and misjudgments that could compromise patient care
- Adversely affect major constituencies of the AMA (adoption of the report would put the AMA in direct conflict with the most significant recommendations of the American Association of Medical College's (AAMC's) recent report on conflict of interest)
In a written response to the released CEJA report, the Coalition for Healthcare Communication (CHC)and the North American Association of Medical Education and Communication Companies (NAAMECC) noted, "While we support improved enforcement of standards and policies to ensure that certified CME is balanced, relevant, and accurate, we can not support a report that does not consider the negative implications of the actions it proposes."
NAAMECC and CHC structured their response into three main areas of concern:
Concern #1: The report findings promote a significant misunderstanding and confusion regarding the dramatic differences between certified CME and other non-certified "education" cited.
Concern #2: The report includes possible misinterpretation and/or misuse of data and conclusions, especially regarding the few instances of data that specifically address certified CME.
Concern #3: The report lacks a detailed proposal or plan to ensure that the proposed elimination of $1 billion in certified CME funding would improve the quality of certified CME amid an increasingly complex healthcare environment.
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