Dec. 20, 2013 – CME Coalition Senior Advisor Andrew Rosenberg stated that a Dec. 18 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) report on the financial relationships between “medical communication companies” and industry contains “many inaccuracies and examples of unfounded innuendo,” according to a recent article in Policy and Medicine.
The article states that JAMA, which did not make its report available to the public but did issue an editorial on the report, “erroneously interchanges medical communications companies with medical education companies,” uses inaccurate data, misunderstands and/or distorts a 2007 Senate Finance Committee Report, criticizes the data policy of medical education companies despite using the same policy, and employs “blatant hypocrisy.”
“JAMA should recognize that not only has the Sunshine Act become the law of the land, but significant strides have been made to ensure that medical professionals know who helps fund CME and other educational programs,” said Coalition for Healthcare Communication Executive Director John Kamp. “PhRMA, AdvaMed, and BIO have all developed significant self-regulatory codes. Moreover, these organizations and communication companies have worked diligently with the ACCME to strengthen the standards for commercial support, increased transparency, and management of potential bias in education,” he continued.“JAMA should know that many of the practices directly or indirectly criticized, such as meeting in Maui, and med ed companies also doing promotion, are practices that have been abandoned for years,” according to Kamp. Indeed, “JAMA mixes up medical education companies with medical communication companies as if they were the same, a distinction that any learned journal should well understand,” he said.
To read the full Policy and Medicine article, go to: http://www.policymed.com/2013/12/continuing-medical-education-cme-flawed-jama-report-blurs-line-between-medical-communication-companies-and-accredit.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+policymed+%28Policy+and+Medicine%29