Today GSK is announcing new standards for funding accredited, continuing medical education for healthcare professionals. These are the programs that doctors and other healthcare professionals must take to maintain their licenses and hospital privileges.
Some critics believe the pharmaceutical industry should no longer subsidize these programs. But we at GSK believe that we have a legitimate role to play in supporting education for healthcare professionals that enhances their knowledge and competence to best prevent, diagnose and treat disease.
The goal of these new funding standards is to increase the quality of medical education programs. We want to demonstrate that they are improving care for patients.
This means that in 2010, GSK will invite grant applications from about 20 medical education providers with strong track records for delivering high quality programs. We will no longer fund programs offered by commercial providers but will continue to fund offerings from academic medical centers and their affiliated teaching and patient care institutions. We will also work with national-level professional medical associations to deliver accredited programs.
This is one more step in our efforts to be more transparent about the way we operate our business and interact with healthcare providers.
I work as a medical billing assistant and this is not good for anybody going through coding school.