Return To Blog

2018 ACCME Annual Report

By John McCormick - August 20, 2019

2018 ACCME Annual Report and Analysis
The 2018 ACCME Annual Report data, released July 17th, 2019,  shows the following for CME activities respective to the 2017 report;
  • 61% growth in non-physician participants
  • 1% decline in physician participants
  • 5% increase in total CME income, including registration fees, monetary support, advertising/exhibits, donations, and grants
The three-year trend data shows that since 2016, the number of physician participants at CME activities has slightly increased by 2%, while the number of non-physician participants increased by 71%. The significant increase in non-physician attendees at CME activities is largely due to more comprehensive data collection from jointly accredited providers, as described by the ACCME below:

New This Year: More Comprehensive Data about Interprofessional Continuing Education

In support of our strategic goal to advance data systems, the three founding members of Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Continuing Education—the ACCME, Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC)— launched the Joint Accreditation Program and Activity Reporting System (JA-PARS), enabling jointly accredited providers to report all of their program and activity data, including uni-professional and interprofessional continuing education (IPCE) activities, into a single, unified repository. Before 2018, jointly accredited providers reported data into multiple accreditors’ data systems. We can now see a more comprehensive picture of the scope of IPCE.

2018 Highlights
  • Non-physician interactions at CME activities increased from approximately 12 million in 2017, to over 20 million in 2018, respectively - a 61% increase in non-physician interactions
  • Total commercial support contributions rose from $740 million to $748 million, an increase of approximately 1% from 2017 numbers
  • Income from advertising and exhibits rose from $434 million in 2017 to nearly $500 million in 2018 - a 14% increase
  • Commercially supported activities averaged 150 physician learners per activity in 2018
    • Non-commercially supported activities averaged 81 physician learners per activity
  • Of the total attendance at CME activities
    • 43% (15,457,998) were physicians
    • 57% (20,708,037) were non-physicians
  • Publishing and / or Education companies secured approximately 59% ($443,398,259) of the total commercial support income earned by ACCME accredited providers in 2018
If you have any questions or would like to request a copy of the report, please feel free to contact us at inquire@globaleducationgroup.com