Continuing education has been a back-door conduit for piles of pharmaceutical money to keep flowing to physicians, despite the disclosure laws that have put a stigma on on pharma gifts to prescribers, a story in Thursday’s Boston Globe illustrated.
The Globe scrutinized annual reports from the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education and found that continuing education companies accounted for 46 percent of CME dollars spent in 2014. That is up from 33 percent in 2011.
The council reports said that more than 40 percent of providers of continuing education “rely on drug company money to defray the cost of their courses,” according to the Globe. The newspaper said that continuing education companies received $311 million in pharma payments last year, 25 percent more than in 2011. Much of that money goes to physicians who teach CME courses.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
“To be blunt, this is just government-sanctioned money laundering,” University of Michigan ophthalmologist Dr. Paul Lichter told the Globe. “Companies are making it appear charitable, but it’s clearly to influence physicians to prescribe expensive drugs and order expensive tests.”
The federal Open Payments database, which went online last year, specifically excludes money from continuing medical education. Interests including the American Medical Association, “dozens of physician specialty groups” and, of course, the pharma industry, would like to keep it that way, the story said.
The 21st Century Cures Act, which sailed through the House last month, contains language that “explicitly exempts from disclosure industry money that is used for educational purposes — including speaking fees, tuition and medical literature,” the Globe reported.
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