ACCME Annual Report Data

Today, we’re going to be talking about ACCME Annual Report Data that was just released for 2012. Each year, the ACCME compiles data on CME and releases it, and most recently they produced this 2012 data. We'd like to highlight three areas that may be of interest to you.

The Healthcare Team Concept

AAFP has pushed the patient-centered medical home concept and the CME involvement numbers seem to support this concept of a team providing healthcare. If you look at numbers over the past five years, that 5 year trend data shows that the number of physician participants increased about 8.8% to a little more than 14 million, however over the past five years the number of non-physician participants has increased almost 25% to a total (a new high) of about a little over 10 million non-physician participants.

Decline in Number of Accredited Providers

Last year, the number of nationally accredited providers by ACCME decreased by by about 1%. That jives with past numbers for nationally accredited providers. However, the number of state accredited providers for CME decreased more than 5%, so we’re seeing some stronger declines there.

Decline in Commercial Support

The total commercial support dropped by about 10% in 2012, to about 662 million. Now some complain that this shows lack of support for CME, but when you really look at the data, there’s actually growing support for CME. Any declines in commercial support were more than offset by a 15% increase in what’s called, “Other Income,” those things like budget allocations and registration fees, as well as a 7% increase in advertising and exhibits income. And we think that there are actually three good reasons to expect that commercial support and all other forms of income for CME will continue to grow in years ahead. CME managers at all organizations, including funders, CME developers, and accredited providers really are demonstrating and communicating more value associated with CME activities than ever before. We now have the data sets to make an actual stronger case for growth of CME and its use in improving healthcare. Secondly, the Sunshine Act did carve out some important exemptions for accredited CME programs and we’re just starting to see those impacts. And last, healthcare really continues to get more complex and with more promising agents and therapeutic developments in the pipeline, the need for CME and evidence based medicine should only continue to grow. As always, if you have questions about the ACCME Annual Report Data or any other topics in the CME enterprise, feel free to contact us at any time