The Disclosure Compliance Process and Individual Requirements

The ACCME Standard

According to the ACCME’s Standards for Commercial Support:

“The provider must be able to show that everyone who is in a position to control the content of an education activity has disclosed all relevant financial relationships with any commercial interest to the provider.”

Disclosure must be made of all financial relationships with ineligible companies within the past 24 months.

  • Planners and presenters with no financial relationships with commercial interests must disclose that fact
  • Planners and presenters with financial relationships with commercial interests must disclose that fact
  • This information must be presented to learners prior to the session

This disclosure is part of CME’s accountability to the public – by providing participants of a CME activity with information that may inform their perspectives on the content of that educational activity.  To be compliant with this expectation, providers need to communicate to the participants both those relevant financial relationships that they discovered in their process of complying with SCS 2.1, as well as the source of all financial support – both monetary and in-kind – given to the provider from commercial interests for the activity.  In addition, this information must be conveyed to the learners prior to the start of the activity.

Any individual that refuses to disclose their financial relationships will be disqualified from being involved with the CME activity as a planner, author, or teacher and can not have control or responsibility for the planning, implementation, or evaluation of the CME activity.

The determination of whether a financial relationship is "relevant" lies with the Division of CME, so our form asks individuals who have any type of control over the content of an activity to disclose ALL of their financial relationships with commercial entities.