Emerging Changes, Tools and Techniques for Continuing Medical Education: Current CME

CME is extremely expensive. The CME market that ACCME is aware of is worth $2.242 billion. This likely does not include indirect costs, direct payments to speakers by pharma, or travel compensation to speakers (currently not disclosed publicly). By comparison, here are some other costs:

$1.5 Billion: 2010 appropriation for NIDA and NIAAA combined
$2.8 Billion: Medical school tuition paid to train a years worth of physicians at all US medical schools (based on my estimate of UNC's out of state tuition * 18,665 medical student enrollees/year * 4 years of training)

This CME financial support paid for:

81,000 activities
660,000 hours of available instruction
Over 19 million participants (11.5 million physicians, 7.8 million non physicians)

In 2010, for the first time, < 50% of funding came from industry [commercial support + exhibits/advertising]. This breaks down as:

$831,000,000 (37%) in commercial support [a decrease of 25 million and 2.9%]
$277,000,000 (12%) in advertising and exhibit revenue

In terms of total activities the breakdown is as follows:

Type of CME
Courses
Internet (enduring materials)
Regularly scheduled series
Enduring materials (other)
Journal CME
Internet (live)
Performance improvement
Internet searching
and learning
Total

Activities
36,374
23,310
9,740
6,230
3,329
1,767
168
143

81,543

%
44.61%
28.59%
11.94%
7.64%
4.08%
2.17%
0.21%
0.18%

100.00%

CME experience in terms of physician participation include

Type of CME	Physicians	%
Internet (enduring materials) Regularly scheduled series Courses Enduring materials (other) Journal CME Internet searching and learning Internet (live) Performance improvement Total	4,589,342 3,147,545 1,474,725 1,089,537 1,053,741 75,844 46,909 29,371 11,507,014	39.88% 27.35% 12.82% 9.47% 9.16% 0.66% 0.41% 0.26% 100.00%

References

ACCME 2010 Annual Report Data. http://www.accme.org/dir_docs/doc_upload/e7520312-92c3-4969-acf0-bdf4c5b8d289_uploaddocument.pdf
PolicyMed. ACCME Releases 2010 Annual Report Data: The CME Economy increased by 2.7% Slowing a Three Year Downturn. August 12, 2011 http://www.policymed.com/2011/08/accme-releases-2010-annual-report-data-the-cme-economy-increased-by-27-slowing-a-three-year-downturn.html