If the pharmaceutical industry won’t pay for CME, who will?

The purging of drug companies from continuing medical education courses continues.

Psychiatrist Daniel Carlat points to what’s happening at the University of Wisconsin, where company-funded CME lectures conveniently left out side effects of the medications that were mentioned.

For instance, in a Pfizer-sponsored course on smoking cessation, not one of Pfizer-marketed Chantix’s many side effects were mentioned.

CME is a big money industry, and in the cited case, Pfizer contributed some $12.3 million to the University of Wisconsin’s courses.

So, if medical schools were to ban the drug industry from funding their CME, who will pay for them? Cash-strapped medical schools? Likely not.

It’s probably going to fall on individual physicians who, in many states, need CME credits to maintain their licenses. I suspect that CME will become significantly more expensive to attend in the near future.

kevinmd.com

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