ACCME: A Minimum Standard

Pfizer's exclusion of MECCs includes those that have developed firewalls between their marketing and educational arms, even those that are or will be approved under the ACCME's new policy, released in August 2007, which requires MECCs to alter their corporate structures so that they are completely separate from sister companies involved in marketing. (MECCs whose parent companies are redefined as commercial interests are no longer eligible for accreditation.)

But Saxton says the business development practices Pfizer is concerned about “create an irreconcilable conflict with independence that is not currently addressed by the ACCME system at all. The MECC community will appropriately point out that as a group they're more in compliance than other provider groups, but noncompliance findings are often for relatively minor issues involving paperwork and ignore more fundamental conflicts of interests that aren't even being looked at or discussed. As the accreditation system becomes less paper-driven and more outcomes-driven, then the ACCME's data will be more relevant to this discussion. Today, it is only one piece of information and we know it is not sufficient. It's a minimum standard.”

Saxton acknowledges that there are independence issues with other provider types, but says they're not as institutionally ingrained as they are with MECCs.

“It doesn't mean that we're ignoring conflicts of interests in those other settings. We have excluded providers in every setting for some of these same reasons, but the issue was just not on the same level of magnitude.”

To comment on this development, please send e-mail to Tamar Hosansky at thosansky@meetingsnet.com.

Getting Grants: 3 Tips

In addition to encouraging providers to focus on performance-improvement initiatives and collaboration with other organizations, the Pfizer CME team offers these pointers for putting together a grant proposal.

• Start with your mission. “If a CME provider is applying for a grant and they start with, ‘Oh, Pfizer has funding available on smoking cessation, so let's come up with a smoking intervention,’ and then they come up with an activity, and they go backwards a step and write up objectives, and then they go backwards a step and do a needs assessment, then it's obvious the activity is not driven by a mission to improve healthcare quality,” says Jacqueline Mayhew, director, Medical Education Group, U.S. External Medical Affairs, Pfizer Inc.

• Account for all your costs, including staff time. In several cases, Pfizer has awarded small $10,000 grants to associations for an annual meeting, and subsequently the organization raised enough through other grants and registration fees to cover the costs as delineated in their budgets. Pfizer then asked for the money back. “The [association] hadn't taken into consideration that they had three full-time people working all year on that meeting,” says Mayhew.

• Get funding in stages. “It is fine to think about an educational intervention in stages and seek funding along the way,” says Mayhew. “We have given grants just to support a needs assessment or planning phase. We can also award grants just for an outcomes-assessment project. Grants do not always have to be for the education intervention itself.”

More On/ the Web

• In May, Pfizer began posting its CME grants at pfizer.com/transparencyingrants. The new CME portal is at www.pfizermededgrants.com.