Who Wants An Educational Program that Docs Actually Trust?
I was exchanging e-mail last week with Rick Bukata, the physician executive who owns and runs the Center for Medical Education [www.ceme.org]. Actually Rick is much more than a physician executive; he is the soul of his company. Everything his company stands for in terms of quality and honesty is a reflection of Rick and the 30 years or so he has been both a physician and a clinical educator.
I've known Rick since the early 1980s when I worked in the California contract medicine industry. He was the medical director of a community hospital emergency department. He had just started a small business creating and publishing medical abstracts to help emergency physicians update their cognitive knowldege of the standard of care. Now, Rick operates an international enterprise with live seminars, audio tapes and written publications. The audience is the full range of acute anc primary care clinical professionals. My company, Challenger Corporation [www.chall.com], is grateful that Rick permits us to exhibit and market our eleectronic physician education materials at his live seminars. When we can, we provide promotions for CEME courses on our web page and by direct mail. Rick's physician instructors also use some of our content in their lecutres and presentations.
Although both companies somewhat overlap in terms of their product offerings and are therefore competitors in principle, the truth is that our relationship is one of those rarities where the sum is greater than its parts. We each reflect and enhance the quality and reputation of the other, and benefit from doing so.
In the last 15 years, CEME's live seminars--high risk medicine, emergency medicine and family medicine boards review courses, primary care updates, continuing certification courses--have acquired a reputation for excellence, consistency, measurable benefit, and continuity unmatched by any other commercial live seminar network in the country. Why?
Here's why:
(1) Brand built by long-term consistency in faculty, sponsorships and outcomes.
(2) Offers backed by money-back guarantees and commitment to remediation for unsuccessful candidates.
(3) Investment in prestigious faculty with proven speaking and teaching skills.
(4) Integrity in each and every aspect of marketing, promotion and fulfillment--claims limited to what can be verified and delivered.
(5) Arms-length production and validation of the instructional content provided in the courses--sponsors cannot "salt the shaft" in terms of subject matter or subject matter interpretation.
(6) Avoidance of sponsorship relationships simply for short-term cash.
Come to think of it, my company stands for the same principles and we have gone about our brand building and development with the same ideals in mind.
What should this tell the drug and device industry about their sponsorship efforts? From my perspective, there is an untapped opportunity for the enlightened corporation that wants to build a long-term bond with the physician community. I am not suggesting that industry abandon its short-term, narrowly focused promotional efforts. Those things are directly related to the enormous pressures created by quarterly financial reports and public finances. But there is room and logic for a longer term strategy. Which firm will take the lead? Who really wants to be known as the standard setter for physician training and education? Who wants to be the "CEME" or "Challenger" of industry sponsored clinical content?
This kind of decision will not be made at the level of the product manager. That individual by necessity has to be focused on the short term and whatever specific drug, device or treatment modality he or she is reponsible for, this year. The visionary we are looking for is at the CEO, Chairman or Board level. I say "visionary", because the culture of the entire industry is aimed at narrow treatment approaches and short-term return. The focus I am suggesting will be broader, longer term [five to ten years] and outside the annual promotional budget. Next week, I will discuss some specific concepts that might work and what they might cost.
Bob Sweeney, PhD
CEO and President
An Educational Program that Docs Trust
I was exchanging e-mail last week with Rick Bukata, the physician executive who owns and runs the Center for Medical Education [www.ceme.org]. Actually Rick is much more than a physician executive; he is the soul of his company. Everything his company stands for in terms of quality and honesty is a reflection of Rick and the 30 years or so he has been both a physician and a clinical educator.
I've known Rick since the early 1980s when I worked in the California contract medicine industry. He was the Medical Director of the emergency department at at a hospital in Glendora, and had just begun creating and publishing medical abstracts to help emergency physicians update their cognitive knowldege of the standard of care. Now, Rick operates an international enterprise with live seminars, audio tapes and written publications. My company, Challenger Corporation, is graetful that Rick permits us to exhibit and market our eleectronic physician education materials at his live seminars. When we can, we provide promotions for CEME courses on our web page and by direct mail. Rick's physician instructors also use some of our content in their lecutres and presentations. Although both companies somewhat overlap in terms of their product offerings and are therefore competitors in principle, the truth is that this relationship is one of those rarities where the sum is greater thanits parts. We each reflect and enhance the quality and reputation of the other.
In the last 15 years, CEME's live seminars--high risk medicine, emergency medicine and family medicine boards review courses, primary care updates, continuing certification courses--have acquired a reputation for excellence, consistency, measurable benefit, and contintuity unmatched by any other commercial live seminar network in the country. Why?
Here's why:
(1) Brand built by long-term consistency in faculty, sponsorships and outcomes.
(2) Offers backed by money-back guarantees and commitment to remediation for unsuccessful candidates.
(3) Investment in prestigious faculty with proven speaking and teaching skills.
(4) Integrity in each and every aspect of marketing, promotion and fulfillment--claims limited to what can be verified and delivered.
(5) Arms-length production and validation of the instructional content provided in the courses--sponsors cannot "salt the shaft" in terms of subject matter or subject matter interpretation.
(6) Avoidance of sponsorship relationships simply for short-term cash.
Come to think of it, my company stands for the same principles and has gone about our brand building and development with the same ideals in mind.
What should this tell the drug and device industry about their sponsorship efforts? From my perspective, there is an untapped opportunity for the enlightened corporation that wants to build a long-term bond with the physician community. I am not suggesting that industry abandon its short-term, narrowly focused, or deliberately weighted promotional efforts. Those things are directly related to the enormous pressures created by quarterly financial reports and public finances. But there is room and logic for a longer term strategy. Which firm will take the lead? Who really wants to be known as the standard setter for physician training and education? Who wants to be the "CEME" or "Challenger" of industry sponsored clinical content?
Darwin and Corporate Ethics
Recently, I read an excellent book by David Sloan Wilson, a biologist teaching at Binghamton University. The book, entitled Darwin's Cathedral, addresses the origins of religion from an evolutionary perspective. Without belaboring what is a fairly intricately argued proposition, Wilson makes the following point:
When humans grow in numbers and numbers of social interactions beyond the scope of hunter-gatherers, the complexity of the interactions requires institutions that exceed in scope and span of control the things that develop in a face-to-face society. Institutions such as religious institutions evolve at a HIGHER LEVEL than the gene or the individual in order to serve the needs of people to organize their lives in a scarce-resource environment.
Corporations are another type of institution that evolved to address complex human social needs, in this case, the organization of economic behavior. As with religious entities, corporations have their own internal belief systems, values, rituals and processes. They also identify and punish proscribed behavior. In fact, these "rules" and rituals are essential to mobilizing internal activity, achieving external goals, and limiting the actions of "free riders".
One of the problems in medicine and medical education [that is, the CME world] is that the agents of change and social fulfillment have little or no experience in or exposure to corporations and corporate ethics, although they are forced toencoutner and deal with these organizations every day. I am talking about doctors and other professionals. Clinicians are trained in what amounts to a guild system, emphasizing individual prowess and insight over collective decision-making. These types of competencies are most beneficial and critically necessary when the physician, as a clinician, is representing the interests and well-being of a patient.
But those very same qualities stand in the way when it comes to organizing and managing a complex organization such as a corporation. Physicians distrust and suspect the motives, even the very rationale for the existence, of corporations. Corporations offer a very poor medium for dealing with the issues of individuals, such as individual patients. But they are inevitable and highly functional for meeting the economic and social needs of large numbers of people. We read every day about the criminal and self-serving actions of the few--Ken Lay, Richard Scrushy et al. But most corporations don't work that way. The internal ideology and corporate culture serves to contrain the actions of management for the most part to pursue the legal and ethical objectives for which the corporation was created. If that were not the case, corporations would not exist and other group-level entities would emerge to take their place.
This is just food for thought. I will say more in my next blog appearance.
Bob Sweeney
