To comply with the Accreditation Council for CME's new Standards for Commercial Support, many CME providers must update their procedures for collaborating with funders, identifying and resolving faculty conflicts of interest, and ensuring that CME content is free of commercial bias.
CME veterans Jacqueline N. Parochka, EdD, President, Excellence in Continuing Education Ltd., Gurnee, Ill.; and Richard F. Tischler Jr., PhD, President, Viator Medical Communications Inc., Mount Airy, Md., have produced a compendium of compliance documents to help providers through this process. The compendium includes ACCME policies and other regulatory requirements, best practices, checklists, and model agreements.
For instance, it includes a sample disclosure form along with a step-by-step process for identifying and resolving conflicts of interest. A Standards for Commercial Support compliance checklist includes a list of items for adhering to each of the Standards. A section on the role of commercial interest representatives at CME activities includes not only the relevant sections from the new Standards, but also examples of best practices.
The compendium, a collection of Microsoft Word documents and a conflict-of-interest decision-tree document in Microsoft PowerPoint format, is available on a CD-ROM. Compendium subscribers will receive updates at least every other month through 2005. For pricing and other information, contact Parochka at jacqueline parochka@msn.com.