Some types of CME seem to be more effective than others and researchers are trying to understand why. Saul Weiner, MD, deputy director at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center and associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, along with his colleagues, set out to explore this question.
They asked three CME providers presenting at a national Society of General Internal Medicine meeting to develop questions to assess what participants knew and felt about a particular subject before, immediately after, and nine months after a CME intervention. Participants were asked these questions immediately after the CME session and nine months later.
Participants in all three sessions demonstrated that they had gained knowledge immediately following the session.
Those who participated in a 90-minute session on research methods reported a modest gain in knowledge, whereas those who participated in an eight-hour research precourse experienced a large gain. A 90-minute clinical workshop produced a moderate gain in knowledge.
But participants in two of three sessions reported that they did not retain that knowledge after nine months.
"We don't know why there is variation, but with this small study, we can show that there is variation," says Weiner.
This article was adapted from one that originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of The Doctor's Office, a HealthLeaders Media publication.
Congressional budget analysts announced that a Senate panel's healthcare $829 billion overhaul would dramatically shrink the ranks of the uninsured and keep President Obama's pledge that doing so would not add to federal budget deficits. According to the CBO, the Finance Committee measure would expand coverage to an additional 29 million Americans by 2019 by expanding Medicaid coverage for the poor and by subsidizing private insurance for low- and middle-income Americans.
Hospital lobbyists said that the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the Senate Finance Committee's health legislation indicated that the committee had not yet delivered on a deal they made with the panel's chairman and the White House for their support. Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, said that as a condition of the industry's political support the White House and Max Baucus had promised earlier this year to extend health coverage to at least 94% of the country's residents, or at least 97% of American citizens. But according to the budget office, the finance committee's proposal would mandate coverage of only 91% of residents and 94% of citizens. Hospitals are counting on the extension of insurance to reduce their current costs for emergency treatment of the uninsured, the New York Times reports.
The Congressional Budget Office has released its findings for the Senate Finance Committee's healthcare bill, and the CBO estimates that the bill will shave more than $80 billion off of the federal deficit over a 10-year period. Here, the Wall Street Journal Health Blog provides five key numbers from the CBO analysis.
Boston Medical Center will look at tightening enforcement of its conflict of interest policy, after determining that one physician violated the rules by earning thousands of dollars as a speaker this year for Eli Lilly & Co. BMC officials have reconvened the committee that oversees doctors' relationships with the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. The group will review "speakers bureau participation and control of presentation content and methods to monitor physician activities," according to a statement from the hospital.
Orthopedists failed to disclose over 20% of the payments they receive from makers of hip and knee replacements when presenting research related to the companies' products, a new study found. In the study, researchers measured the accuracy of disclosures by orthopedic surgeons who presented research at the March 2008 annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, by comparing the doctors' disclosures against a similar list published by five makers of hip and knee implants.