It’s a remarkable new model whose time has come. Have physicians pay for their own education.
After all, homeless people have to pay back the government loans they take out in order to attend for-profit universities. Now some people are saying it’s time for doctors to pay for their Continuing Medical Education courses.
The way it goes now is like this: The doctor gets an invitation from a drug company to have dinner, paid for by the company, at the Palm Restaurant. At the Palm, the doctor joins a table of happy people who drink wine and eat steak and listen to a salesperson from the drug company talk about an expensive new pill. At the end of the meal, deeply satisfied with the dinner and very grateful to the drug company, the doctor decides he’ll start prescribing the new pill tomorrow.
His night at the Palm has earned him four CME credits.
“[D]octors often pay little or nothing for the instruction because many of the companies that offer it are partly funded by makers of drugs and medical devices,” explains the Boston Globe in an article about a Harvard professor who’s starting a CME company without big pharma money.
Critics say the reliance on industry funding allows drug and device companies to influence what is taught, potentially misleading physicians about the best treatments for patients and pushing up spending on prescription drugs. They note that many other professionals pay for their own continuing education.