In May, Meeting Professionals International launched the HMCC Verified Venues program, pushing the supplier side of the meetings industry to boost its skills in handling the unique demands of educational events in the life-science field.
Given the special restrictions on meetings featuring doctors and/or nurses in attendance—including the types of venues that are permissible, monetary caps on food-and-beverage offerings, guest-room rate limitations, and others—the HMCC-VV designation will be given to those properties whose staffs have demonstrated proficiency in handling life-science meetings. It will also help planners of pharma, biotech, and medical-device meetings identify facilities that are best prepared to work with them.
The designation program comprises eleven individual standards that venues are evaluated on to determine their alignment with the best-practices standards of healthcare meetings. Each venue that applies must earn at least 50 of 65 possible points to earn the designation. For example, 20 points are awarded if at least 10 percent of a property’s event-sales and -service staff has earned the Healthcare Meeting Compliance Certificate from MPI, which requires a four-hour training program focused on medical-meeting regulations.
Other point-earning criteria include having a dedicated section on the property’s website for life-science meetings; case studies of different types of HCP-focused meetings; healthcare-event-specific RFPs; non-compete clauses and regulatory billing requirements in contracts; and HCP-focused meal-planning options with pricing.
Once awarded, venues are provided several opportunities to show their specialty in healthcare meetings and connect them with medical meeting professionals. MPI will issue the venue a media kit that includes:
- High resolution HMCC-VV badge image for website
- Social media language and imagery
- Timeline for media advisory release
- Link to HMCC-VV page and directory located on the MPI website
- HMCC Course times and dates, plus an enrollment code for course enrollment for staff members
Venue applications are accepted on a rolling basis by the MPI Academy team. Reviews can take up to three weeks. If there are questions or gaps in items submitted, MPI Academy staff will request additional documentation.
The HMCC-VV program was beta-tested with Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, which is now the first HMCC Verified Venue.
