Tools for Implementing the Updated Standards for Commercial Support

The ACCME is pleased to provide to the CME community a set of tools to help our system implement the ACCME’s Updated Standards for Commercial Support. Since September 2004, the ACCME has received feedback from CME providers regarding the need for information to help organizations understand new expectations, materials to provide education for CME staff and volunteers, and documents to support the implementation of the Updated Standards for Commercial Support. The ACCME is hopeful that these tools will meet the CME community’s articulated needs.

This “toolkit” contains the following documents and materials:

Self-Assessment Tools

• Provider Self-Assessment on Readiness to Demonstrate Compliance with the Updated Standards for Commercial Support
• PowerPoint Presentation: "Who Wants to be Accredited?"

Educational Tools

• What’s New in ACCME’s Standards for Commercial Support?
• PowerPoint Presentation: "ACCME's Standards for Commercial Support"
• PowerPoint presentation: "Managing Conflicts of Interest"
• Using Research, Professional Opinions, and Organizational Practices to Help Validate ACCME’s Standards for Commercial Support: A Teaching Tool

Implementation Tools

• Current Definitions and Interpretations from ACCME
• SAMPLE: Learner’s Bill of Rights
• SAMPLE Faculty Correspondence:
  • Letter to Identify Relevant Financial Relationships
  • Form to Identify Relevant Financial Relationships
  • Letter to Identify Relevant Financial Relationships with Form Embedded
  • Letter of Expectations Following Faculty Disclosure to Provider
• SAMPLE: Written Agreement for Commercial Support

Note: The ACCME is offering these implementation tools not as finite interpretations of its policies, but as examples that providers have requested to give them ideas and foundations with which work can begin. Organizations should feel free to adapt these tools to their specific CME programs. Providers are not required or expected to use these resources.

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