Old School, New School Taren Grom We look forward to discussing the latest industry trends at the Annual Conference on CME Provider/Industry Collaboration, Oct. 17-19. Please stop by to say hello. Letter from the Editor VIEW on Medical Education August 2007 In September 2006, the ACCME set forth updated guidelines to ensure that CME is designed to support patient safety and practice improvement. As sponsors, providers, and grantors became comfortable with the new guidelines, business continued to move forward, if the results of the ACCME’s annual survey are anything to go by. There were increases across the board in terms of jointly sponsored activities, hours of instruction, physician participants, and nonphysician participants. (Please turn to page 9 for a detailed breakdown.) These detailed data support a very informal survey conducted by PharmaVOICE within the CME community. The majority of those polled revealed that they would be increasing their CME budgets in 2008 by upwards of 50%. Likewise, sponsors indicated that they would be increasing their CME activities in the coming year. With the new standards set to go into effect in 2008, providers are planning for a renewed focus on competency, performance, and patient outcomes. This month’s executive Forum features insights from a variety of industry executives who discuss how the new regulations will impact their programs, hot button issues associated with the guidelines, and how the revised model of accreditation and updated criteria have improved processes for CME providers and learners. Although appropriate and necessary firewalls are in place, CME doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Our distinguished panel members provide their take on how the different factions can work together to strengthen CME activities and they provide some best practices to ensure that the education remains free of commercial bias yet meets certain milestones. One of the hot topic issues that is expected to change not only the CME landscape in the next year but the whole physician arena is pay-for-performance, also known as P4P. This shift in the reimbursement model would reward providers for the quality of their healthcare services. Our Forum experts discuss the pros and cons of the P4P system and the steps their organizations have taken to become familiar with the new model. Content and reimbursement are not the only areas up for discussion, as evidenced by the ongoing debate regarding the pros and cons of live versus online CME events. It’s been noted that in the past six years, online CME activities have increased by more than 1,000% and these Web-based programs now account for almost a quarter of all CME activities. Despite this growth, 78.5% of pharmaceutical companies are still allocating their CME budgets for live events. As mentioned previously, there will be more focus on patient outcomes in the future; as such our experts tackle the subject of the different evaluation methods being used for outcomes measurement and how they share the data. Complementing these pharmaceutical company sponsor insights are provocative and thought-provoking articles from the provider side of the business. Experts in their own right, these individuals complement the Forum content and provide their opinions on CME planning, collaboration, customized programming, online events, the future of the industry, live events, and outcomes measurement. All in all, the next several months will prove to be challenging for all of those who are involved in this ever-shifting discipline. We look forward to seeing you at this year’s Annual Conference on CME Provider/Industry Collaboration, Oct. 17-19, in Arlington, Va., where the old school practices will be put to rest in the new era of CME. Taren Grom Editor

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