When Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City stopped accepting commercial support for its continuing medical education activities last January, many at the institution had their doubts that the program would survive, writes Meetings Net. Most of the staff was surprised at the decision, since participants hadn’t reported perceiving commercial bias in Sloan-Kettering programs.

“Our staff was very worried that this would deep-six the CME program,” says Thomas Fahey senior vp of the clinical program development at MSKCC, and chairman of the CME committee. But “we really needed to be squeaky clean and certain that there was no commercial support for our CME activities that could be construed as influencing the program.”

One year later, CME at Memorial Sloan-Kettering is alive and well without commercial support, but the program - and the staff - have gone through quite a transition. “It’s been a sea change,” says Peter Brodhead, administrator, CME at MSKCC.

Operating without commercial support is “like going back to the model of people sitting at a flip-top desk, having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, as opposed to what CME in many ways has become over the course of the commercially supported years,” he tells Meetings Net. Whether the old ways can survive in a new era remains to be seen. “Basically, we want to see if we can do this. The jury’s still out. So far we’ve been okay, but I certainly have a few more grey hairs than I remember.”

The decision to ban commercial support for CE/CME throughout the institution was made late in July 2006 by hospital leadership, particularly Robert Wittes, the, physician in chief.

At the recommendation of Wittes and senior management, the board voted unanimously to prohibit commercial support. The ban went into effect in two steps. First, Wittes mandated a six-month trial period, starting in January 2007, banning all commercial support for activities that took place on MSKCC property. Then, the ban was made permanent, but the meetings were very different. These were the changes made…

1 -Three courses originally scheduled off-site at hotels were moved to MSKCC’s on-site conference center, which seats up to 350, saving money;

2 - For some courses, CME staff eliminated lunches. Attendees either have to “brown-bag it” or pay for their own meal;

3 - Journal advertising and direct-mail campaigns to promote CME courses were cut back, and the public affairs and marketing departments are more heavily relied on;

4 - They encourage course directors to use as many internal speakers as possible, which also saved money on travel, hotels and honoraria;

5 - Registration fees for most external courses were raised from 10 percent to 20 percent.

“One of my challenges has been coaxing some course directors who have done commercially supported courses in the past to go ahead with this new policy,” says Brodhead. “The initial reaction from some was, ‘How am I ever going to do it without the money?’” It really involved working closely with course directors to look at budgets in a more strategic light.”

Hat tip to The Carlat Psychiatry blog and the WSJ Health blog