At a packed meeting held after hours at the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions annual conference on January 23, the Continuing Medical Education Coalition, a lobbying group formed in 2011 to represent the interests of the CME community on Capitol Hill, called on CME providers, medical societies, patient advocacy groups, and other nonprofit organizations to voice their objections to a proposed rule that would make them responsible for reporting what they spend on faculty and other healthcare professionals whose fees are paid for by educational grants from pharmaceutical companies. But time is running out—the deadline to let Health and Human Services know your thoughts on this rule is Friday, February 17. Read more here.

This also was the topic of a chat on the Twitter hashtag #CMERegs on Tuesday, Feb. 14. Here's what they discussed.

CECity and the American College of Physicians are piloting a new platform, called MedConcert, designed to give physicians a way to connect with a community of practice, measure their performance with that of their peers, find interventions to help close their practice gaps, and build an e-portfolio to track credentials, board certifications, and licensure.

Learn more about the platform's plans to take physician performance—and quality-improvement efforts—to a new level.

If you happened to miss this year's Alliance for Continuing Education in the Healthcare Professions (formerly the Alliance for CME) annual conference in January in Orlando, here's a wrapup of some of the news the organization announced at the meeting.

You may also be interested in perusing some posts from the Medical Meetings Capsules blog:

The Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions annual conference in January included a session on on risk evaluation and mitigation strategy, or REMS, for long-acting and extended-release opioids. Now required by the Food and Drug Administration, these are of high interest to many CME providers (78 percent of those in the audience intended to do REMS education) and many of these would like to also use commercial support to do REMS (50 percent said they plan to apply for grants for REMS).

Here's what the session leaders—Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education’s Chief Executive Murray Kopelow, MD; Theresa Toigo, RPh, with the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research; and Pamela Mason, BS, CCMEP, FACME, director, Medical Education Grants Office, AstraZeneca—had to say, plus an exclusive post-conference interview with Kopelow that delves more deeply into the ACCME's perspective on REMS.

Francois Nader, MD, isn’t just president and chief executive officer of NPS Pharmaceuticals. He’s also a guy who really gets how vital meeting managers are to the success of a company. Calling meeting managers the "gatekeepers of compliance," he points out that they are the ones in the field ensuring these interactions are beneficial while remaining compliant with industry regulations. The position has evolved so much over the years, from purely logistics to one that demands professionals who understand regulations as well as a company's strategic business decisions. Look for his take on how industry trends and compliance challenges affect the meeting management process at the 8th Pharmaceutical Meeting Management Forum, March 25-28, in Orlando.

The other end of the meeting spectrum from the company CEO are the physicians who participate in a pharma company’s external meetings. Co-sponsors Medical Meetings and The Center for Business Intelligence have rounded up a stellar panel of docs who are eager to share how federal, state, industry, and corporate compliance issues are affecting their ability to meet their educational needs. They’ll also talk about how travel restrictions and other new regulation-driven issues factor into their decision-making process as they determine which certified or promotional meeting to attend. And they’re ready to tell all about how the trends in online education and social media are affecting how they obtain the clinical information they need to treat their patients effectively.

Here’s where you can go for more information and to register.