Accredited as a CME provider by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education® (ACCME), the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM) has responsibility for the educational process. The AOSSM expects all its CME activities to be balanced, independent, objective, scientifically rigorous and in the best interest of patient care. The AOSSM mandates that promotion and education be separate and that the planning and development of its educational activities are not influenced by any commercial interests. The AOSSM attests that the person(s) responsible for development of this educational activity did so independently and were not influenced by commercial supporters.
The AOSSM requires that all faculty, planners, AOSSM leadership, and relevant members of the AOSSM professional team comply with the ACCME Standards for Commercial Support. To be compliant, each must disclose all financial relationships within the last twelve months with any commercial interest. An ACCME defined commercial interest is any entity producing, marketing, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients. Consideration for participation as faculty and / or planning may be withdrawn if disclosure is not received in a timely manner. The AOSSM oversees the process and will give you ample opportunity to provide a disclosure prior to seeking a replacement. The AOSSM understands that financial commercial relationships do not automatically preclude the ability to provide a balanced, objective, and scientifically rigorous perspective and / or presentation(s).
The AOSSM relies on an internal review process to identify and resolve faculty and planner conflicts of interest (COI). If a disclosure reflects any such COI, the AOSSM will use the internal review process to resolve it and will communicate the resolution to the faculty or planner. The person must also assure the AOSSM that the written and verbal content of any presentation(s), educational product, faculty role, planning, or other educational involvement will be balanced, fair, scientifically rigorous, and in the best interest of patient care. Furthermore, the AOSSM learner evaluations assess the presence of commercial bias in all its educational activities, and those evaluations are monitored by the responsible oversight committee.
Expectations for faculty presentations are that they will be of the highest quality. The AOSSM is responsible for validating the clinical content of CME activities that are provided. All faculty and planners must agree to the following:
- All recommendations involving clinical medicine in a CME activity must be based on evidence that is accepted within the profession of medicine as adequate justification for their indications and contraindications in the care of patients.
- All scientific research referred to, reported, or used in CME in support or justification of a patient care recommendation must conform to the generally accepted standards of experimental design, data collection and analysis.
- Content must be free from any commercial bias.
- Strive to use generic names to the extent possible.
- If trade names are used, reference several trade names, if available.
- Explicitly and clearly emphasize any investigational use of a commercial product or procedure. Explicitly and clearly emphasize any “off label” uses of a substance or product (not approved in the US for the use under discussion).
- Ensure that all presentations are HIPAA compliant.