Clinician attitudes about commercial support of continuing medical education: results of a detailed survey

Abstract

Background: Pharmaceutical and medical device company funding supports up to 60% of accredited continuing medical education (CME) costs in the United States. Some have proposed measures to limit the size, scope, and potential influence of commercial support for CME activities. We sought to determine whether participants at CME activities perceive that commercial support introduces bias, whether this is affected by the amount or type of support, and whether they would be willing to accept higher fees or fewer amenities to decrease the need for such funding.

Methods: We delivered a structured questionnaire to 1347 participants at a series of 5 live CME activities about the impact of commercial support on bias and their willingness to pay additional amounts to eliminate the need for commercial support.

Results: Of the 770 respondents (a 57% response rate), most (88%) believed that commercial support introduces bias, with greater amounts of support introducing greater risk of bias. Only 15%, however, supported elimination of commercial support from CME activities, and less than half (42%) were willing to pay increased registration fees to decrease or eliminate commercial support. Participants who perceived bias from commercial support more frequently agreed to increase registration fees to decrease such support (2- to 3-fold odds ratio). Participants greatly underestimated the costs of ancillary activities, such as food, as well as the degree of support actually provided by commercial funding.

Conclusion: Although the medical professionals responding to this survey were concerned about bias introduced from commercial funding of CME, many were not willing to pay higher fees to offset or eliminate such funding sources.