Low Rates of Reporting Commercial Bias by Physicians Following Online Continuing Medical Education Activities

Abstract

Background

Concerns have been raised about bias in commercially supported continuing medical education (CME) activities, although the data are sparse about whether such bias exists, or if so, its extent.

Methods

Postactivity CME evaluation surveys were analyzed to quantitate reporting rates of bias, overall and by funding source.

Results

5Of 1,621,647 physicians who participated in online CME activities, 1,064,642 (65.7%) completed the evaluation surveys and 5.9% reported no opinion. The affirmative rates of physician perception of bias were 0.63% overall, a weighted average of 0.84% for activities developed with and 0.48% for those developed without commercial support, a difference of 0.36% (P <.001, 95% confidence interval, 0.33-0.39). Among the subgroup who strongly disagreed that there is no bias, the difference between commercial (0.17%) and noncommercial (0.11%) funding was 0.06% (P <.001, 95% confidence interval, 0.05-0.08, P <.05), smaller than the overall difference.

Conclusions

These data demonstrate that about 93% of physician participants affirmatively claim to perceive no commercial bias following online CME activities, over 99% if no opinion is included, overall and regardless of funding source.

Keywords: Commercial bias, Conflict of interest, Continuing medical education

a Medscape LLC, New York, NY

b Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

Requests for reprints should be addressed to Julie Ellison, PhD, Medscape, LLC, 370 Seventh Avenue, Suite 1101, New York, NY 10001

Funding: The study was funded by Medscape, LLC.

Conflict of Interest: Julie Ellison and Jing Wang disclose that they are employed by Medscape, LLC. George Lundberg and Destry Sulkes disclose they were employed by Medscape, LLC at the time of the preparation of the manuscript. George Lundberg is currently a Consulting Professor, Stanford University, and Distinguished Consultant, Physicians Advocates, Berkeley, Calif. Charles H. Hennekens discloses that he receives investigator initiated research grant support from Bayer to Florida Atlantic University; serves as an independent scientist either as Chair or member of the Data and Safety Monitoring Boards or as an advisor to: Actelion, Amgen, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Dainippon Sumitomo, Food and Drug Administration, General Electric, GlaxoSmithKline, National Institutes of Health, Sanofi-Aventis and UpToDate; and serves as a speaker for National Association for Continuing Education, PriMed, International Atherosclerosis Society, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer.

Authorship: The work is original and the authors meet the criteria for authorship, including acceptance of responsibility for the scientific content and writing of the article.

PII: S0002-9343(09)00413-6

doi:10.1016/j.amjmed.2009.02.026

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