A post on the FDA Advisory Committee site is questioning whether or not the best way to teach elderly folks about the appropriate use and risk of medications is through the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services‘ mailings to Medicare D beneficiaries, or if they should just pop simple explanations into the monthly Social Security check envelopes. Another option:
- Another way to reach out to the elderly would be to educate healthcare professionals through government-funded continuing medical education programs, [National Research Center for Women & Families President Diana Zuckerman] said.
“CME courses are something that our center has been looking into and we have been shocked to discover that because of the way that the CME process works...they are almost entirely funded by the pharmaceutical companies,” Zuckerman said.
“It would be great if somehow the government was able to be the more unbiased source of information on these products” by educating “the health professionals who serve elderly patients,” she said.
