On Jun. 23, CME Coalition submitted a letter to Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in response to his request for information (RFI) on pandemic preparedness legislation. CME Coalition Executive Director Chris Lamond explained that continuing medical education will play a vital role in educating clinicians on how to best diagnose and treat patients, noting that education of America’s health provider workforce has emerged as an acute area of need amid the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The letter also encourages Congress to provide additional funding to facilitate critical CME initiatives related to COVID-19, as well as future pandemic response. “…The total cost of educating America’s providers on the impact of COVID-19 on their practice is expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars at least — a sum that simply cannot be absorbed by traditional funders of CME,” the letter states. “Congress should acknowledge the crucial role of CME for the nation’s health workforce by appropriating dedicated funding to facilitate continuing medical education initiatives related to COVID-19."

​The CME Coalition has issued a new compliance guide, Accredited CME Commercial Support FAQs, for use by accredited CME providers and commercial supporters. Accredited CME providers strive to provide CME content and materials to meet the needs of millions of healthcare professionals. For those accredited CME providers that receive commercial support from pharmaceutical or medical device manufacturers, ACCME-accredited CME providers accredited by the must abide by the ACCME SCS to ensure the independence and integrity of the CME program.

On January 10, 2020, the CME Coalition's Andrew Rosenberg and Rockpoint's Tom Sullivan presented to the annual conference of the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions (ACEhp) (see here for the slides). The presentation provided an overview of key topics of interest to stakeholders in the CME community, including the political dynamics in Washington, CME for MIPS, Open Payments, activity on Capitol Hill relating to CME, and various state action around proposed "gift bans." 

The CME Coalition has submitted comments to Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Fred Upton (R-MI) in response to their solicitation for comments on ‘Cures 2.0’ — an important next step in their efforts to advance medical research and foster innovation.  As the letter points out, policymakers have increasingly recognized that there is an important role for enhanced provider education to address discrete policy challenges.