Pfizer Ending Support For CME By Third Parties
5 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // July 2nd, 2008 // 11:05 am
In what may be a first, the drugmaker will still support continuing medical education courses at academic institutions, teaching hospitals and those supported by medical societies, but no longer directly support CME courses offered by for-profit medical-education and communication companies, Dow Jones reports.
Why? A Pfizer exec says by ending the payments, the drugmaker hopes to avoid the appearance of any conflicts of interest. As you know, industry-supported CME courses for doc have been under fire as ploys to promote meds, rather than purely educational events. Here is the Pfizer statement.
A Senate Finance Committee report last year concluded pharma used educational grants totaling $1 billion annually to increase market share, including promotion of off-label usage.
“The reason we’re not going to directly support them has to do with mitigating the perception of a conflict of interest, if a direct payment is going from a company like Pfizer to them,” Cathryn Clary, vp of US external medical affairs, tells Dow Jones, although Pfizer will continue to support academic and medical-society CME because “their primary mission is patient care.”
Pfizer spent a total of about $80 million last year on CME courses offered by companies and non-profit organizations, Clary adds, with less than half going to for-profit companies. In May, Pfizer began disclosing details of its educational grants on its web site (back story).
This is the latest move by drugmakers to respond to calls to disclose relationships that influence physician prescribing. Lilly, for instance, recently agreed to support a watered-down version of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act and two months after AstraZeneca agreed to post info on its US web site about contributions to state and federal political candidates.
Clary tells Pfizer supports CME in therapeutic areas in which the company has some sort of business interest, but doesn’t require the content of courses be about Pfizer products. Recently, some drug makers and CME organizations have taken steps to ensure course content is more insulated from the business interests of the companies funding it, the Dow writes.
Pfizer, however, may also continue indirect support for commercial CME companies. That’s because the academic centers and medical associations that it supports may contract with CME companies, according to Clary. “The distinction we’re making is we’re not directly paying them,” she tells the Dow.
One large grant Pfizer recently made was a $3.4 million contribution to the California Academy of Family Physicians to support a three-year, national medical education campaign aimed at reducing the number of US smokers, the wire service notes. Pfizer, of course, markets Chantix, a smoking-cessation drug, and participants in the campaign include a medical-education company.
This may be the first time a major drug company has ended direct support for third-party CME companies, David Davis, senior director of continuing education and improvement at the Association of American Medical Colleges, tells Dow Jones. Other drug companies’ policies couldn’t immediately be verified.
Pfizer is making other changes in its CME procedures, including: initiating a competitive grant review period for grant applicants; supporting financial caps on grant support to ensure more balanced funding; and requiring all grant applicants to meet criteria equivalent to the highest level of accreditation by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, Dow Jones reports. And Clary says Pfizer also has hired new CME grant reviewers, including experts in adult education.
Asked to comment on Pfizer’s move, Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote a statement: “My goal is to strengthen the system by shedding light on the financial relationships that exist between industry and medical doctors, medical education programs, medical journals, and medical research…Public scrutiny can do a lot to bring about necessary reforms.”
Spokespeople for CME trade and accreditation groups couldn’t immediately be reached, according to Dow Jones.
pharma PR hack
The net effect may be to actually make it harder to track conflict payments. Take for instance their current anti-smoking campaign of Med-ED for $4.3 million, with the money flowing from Pfizer to a physician association in the form of a lump sum grant. The association then pays the commercial co that provides the honoraria to the physician- the website tracking capability is gone away. Before you could track payments to titles to docs. There is no way for the public to know whether their doctor is a Pfizer consultant or really thinks Chantix is safe but overblown by media. It isn’t the direct support that is under the public radar but the indirect that they are not stopping and will probably increase.
Michael D
It has always amazed me that the drug companies are willing to spend big bucks to support medical education via the Med-Ed companies but won’t give a $5,000 grant to a university CME provider. Now I realize that the Med-Ed companies were merely an extention of the drug company while the univesity based CME providers wouldn’t prostitute themselves.
If this leads to the demise of the Med-Ed companies—good ridance.
Atlex
Michael,
Actually, for the industry as a whole, more than 50% of the dollars are already flowing through academic medical centers, professional organizations, etc. rather than Med-Ed companies. The trend away from Med-Ed companies began a few years ago. This move will simply speed up the trend.
Atlex
Chris
> The association then pays the commercial co that provides the honoraria to the physician
Pharma PR Hack -
Honoraria should not be associated with CME programs (except for speaker honoraria), or am I missing something?
Paul G
Read the fine print of the Pfizer statement…
They may still support for-profit CME but indirectly. All they are doing is throwing it in the hands of academic departments to manage third parties. medical societies and schools are the worst at planning CME.