Uh oh, I posted about the new ACCME Standards for Commercial Support yesterday without reading all the related documents on the Web site. Things have changed since I last perused the document.
This morning I start getting calls from CME providers who have some serious concerns with the Identifying and Resolving Conflicts of Interest in Continuing Medical Education addendum that was released along with the new Standards, and now I realize that the article I referenced yesterday actually did get it right after all. My apologies to the AP reporter, whose story got picked up and is all over the place now.
For example, from today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
- Under the proposed rules, doctors with financial ties to a drug company would be told what kind of recommendations they could make during a teaching presentation. Those instructions would be given to the doctor by a third party with no links to the drug company, the AP reported.
I need to read through all this much more carefully before I can make any intelligent comment on it, but my gut is screaming, "First Amendment." Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think--many of those I spoke with this morning believe this addendum actually rolls the Standards back to the earlier draft, which so many objected to. More later...
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