Standards for Independence in Accredited CE

New Rules on the Horizon for Managing Independent Continuing Education

In January, 2021, six national continuing education accrediting bodies jointly adopted and released the Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education to replace ACCME’s 2014 Standards for Commercial Support. Accredited providers of any of the following agencies are expected to be in full compliance with the new Standards beginning January 1, 2022. The accreditors who partnered on the new Standards were:
    Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME)
    Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) [pdf]
    American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP)
    American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC)
    Association of Regulatory Boards of Optometry’s Council on Optometric Practitioner Education (ARBO/COPE)
    Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Continuing Education (JA-IPCE)

Why New Standards?

The goal of the new Standards is to better support our common goal to ensure that education is about what is best for patients and clinicians, not about financial incentives, to ensure that participants are free to learn without bias or influence by receiving the highest quality education guided by data, evidence, and science, and to safeguard clinician and public trust in our endeavors to protect public health.

What changed?

The previous standards were reorganized, and many accreditor policies were integrated directly into the new Standards. In addition, new terminology has been introduced:

• Commercial interests are now Ineligible Companies
• Resolving COI is now Mitigating Relationships
• Accredited Continuing Education refers to all CE, not just CME/CPE/CNE

Highlights of the upcoming changes include:

• Individuals disclose ALL financial relationships, not just those they think are relevant. (This has been common practice at UCSF since 2014.)
• Individuals do not determine relevance of their own relationships.
• The disclosure period was extended from 12 months to 24 months prior to an activity.
• The requirement to disclose financial relationships of the spouse/partner was removed.
• A statement that relationships have been mitigated must be included in disclosure to learners.
• Faculty are prohibited from promoting or selling products or services in accredited education.
• You must obtain consent of learners before sharing their information.
• Accredited activities and marketing or nonaccredited activities must be separated by a 30-minute interval if they occur in the same educational space.

What’s next?

The Office of CME is working to update forms and procedures related to the new Standards in the weeks ahead, to be released for use in July. We encourage you to adopt these as soon as possible so all activities beginning, or continuing beyond, January 1, 2022 are in full compliance.   

Note that implementation among the accreditors may vary slightly. To review the new Standards, please visit the appropriate accreditor’s relevant pages, using the links in the list above.

Use this link to review the FAQ.

View more: