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2020 ACCME Annual Report

2020 ACCME Annual Report Analysis

By John McCormick - June 30, 2021

2020 ACCME Annual Report and Analysis - Summary
The 2020 ACCME Annual Report data, released June 17, 2021, shows the following for CME activities respective to the 2019 report.
  • 37% increase in non-physician/other participants, 5% increase in physician interactions
  • 26% decrease in total CME income, including registration fees, monetary support, advertising/exhibits, donations, and grants. Advertising/exhibit income was down nearly 50% compared to 2019 
  • 7% decrease in Commercial support income
The three-year trend data shows that since 2018 annual reporting, the number of physician participants at CME activities increased by 18% while the number of non-physician participants increased by 31%. This significant increase in non-physician attendees at CME activities is primarily due to more comprehensive data collection from jointly accredited providers, as described by the ACCME below that was first used in the 2018 ACCME Annual Report.

New in 2018: 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.

2020 ACCME Annual Report and Analysis - Statistics
  • Non-physician interactions at CME activities increased from $19.5 Million in 2019 to $27 million in 2020 – an increase of 37%
  • Total commercial support contributions decreased from $776 Million in 2019 to $722 Million in 2020, a decrease of approximately 7% from 2019 numbers. Three-year data shows since 2018, commercial support income is down by approximately 3%.
  • Income from advertising and exhibits decreased drastically from 2019 to 2020 – from $542 million in 2019 to $219 Million in 2020.
  • Commercially supported activities averaged 145 physician learners per activity in 2020
    • Non-commercially supported activities averaged 100 physician learners per activity
  • Of the total attendance at CME activities
    • 40% (18,248,620) were physicians
    • 60% (27,092,527) were non-physicians/other learners
  • Publishing and / or Education companies secured approximately 70% ($504 Million,) of the total commercial support income earned by ACCME accredited providers in 2020
A full copy of the report is available on the ACCME website. 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

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