The Future of CME Envisioned by the ACCME and AMA

Both the ACCME and the AMA are dedicated to supporting physician lifelong learning. As an accredited provider of CME, the AMA works to provide high-quality educational activities that lead to better patient health outcomes. Now the ACCME and the AMA have come together to drive the future of CME.

Collaboration to Support Alignment

The ACCME and the AMA have collaborated to align their two systems to drive the future of CME. They’ve adopted a single set of core principles that serve to facilitate flexibility in educational standards, receiving input from the CME community in a Call for Comment process.

In fact, the ACCME and the AMA have simplified and aligned their expectations for CME activities that are certified for the AMA’s Physician’s Recognition Award (PRA) credit.

In this new AMA PRA credit system, standards have been created to encourage innovation. As a CME director, you have flexibility when it comes to CME activities that meet physician education standards, are independent of commercial influence, and are certified for the AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™.

This collaboration also means fewer rules. To drive the future of CME, the AMA alignment has simplified innovation in design and the delivery of various activities that include new technologies like adaptive e-learning, simulations, virtual realities, social media, and even gamification.

So, the takeaways from all this are:

• The ACCME accreditation requirements go hand in hand with the AMA core requirements, with no new rules for accredited providers.
• There’s more flexibility for accredited providers due to the simplified and reduced learning format requirements.
• You can design and deliver certified activities using a variety of methods to drive meaningful learning for your learners, as long as you follow core and credit requirements.
• As a CME provider, you can designate an activity format as “other.”

Right Down to the Core: FAQs about the Future of CME

The simplification of CME is designed to encourage flexibility and innovation in accredited CME, while ensuring that your activities still meet education standards. It also lets you introduce and combine instructional and learning formats geared toward your learners’ needs. The key is that these must comply with the AMA’s seven core requirements.

First, the alignment must be made of two distinct elements:

• Core requirements for activities
• A limited number of format-specific requirements

The core requirements are already aligned with those of ACCME and don’t involve new ones for accredited providers. If you meet ACCME requirements, you’ll have met the core requirements.

Here is the breakdown for “A”:

1. Your CME activities must conform to the AMA/ACCME definition of CME.
2. It has to address educational knowledge, competence, or performance for professional practice gaps of the activity learners.
3. The CME activity must appropriate content that’s in depth and scope for the intended physician learners.
4. State the identified educational purpose and/or objectives for the activity with clear instructions and directions on how to successfully complete the activity.
5. Your CME activity must use one or more learning methodologies suited to that activity’s purpose and/or objectives.
6. The CME activity must provide an assessment of your learners that measures their achievement.
7. You must plan and implement your CME activity in accordance with the ACCME Standards for Commercial Support Standards to Ensure Independence in CME Activities.<br>

“B” CME requirements continue as follows.

If your learning type is an enduring material, performance improvement, or journal-based CME, you must follow these format-specific requirements:

• These enduring materials provide access to proper bibliographic sources to enable further study.
• Any journal-based CMEs include one or more peer-reviewed articles.
• The performance-based improvement CME must have a mechanism in place that ensures content quality of the selected performance measures that are well-defined and evidence based. The physicians should have clear instructions that define the educational documentation and timelines required. You need to provide them with adequate background information so they can identify and understand the performance measures that guide their activity and any evidence, should this be needed.
• It must validate the quality of your physicians’ participation by a review of submitted PI CME activity documentation. This, in turn, is broken down into three additional stages:
  • Stage A: The CME must validate the quality of your physicians’ participation assessment through identified performance measurements via chart reviews or another appropriate method.
  • Stage B: You should measure learning from the application of PI to patient care. You’ll implement interventions through analysis using tracking tools.
  • Stage C: You should reassess and consider the performance measured after the implementation of interventions. Compare the original assessment using the same performance measures. You should summarize any practice, process, and/or outcomes that result from conducting your PI CME activity.

A Future-Proof Way to Deliver CME for ACCME and AMA Alignment

Now that the ACCME and AMA alignment has made things easier for you and the future of CME, there’s a hassle-proof way to deliver your content to your physician learners.

EthosCE is a Learning Management System (LMS) that provides broad experience for your learners and gives you the tools you need to fully assess your learners. This LMS is designed to automate, streamline, and reduce the costs associated with the delivery of your CME activities. It addresses your required innovations and helps you assess your physician learners.

EthosCE provides support for multiple-choice, true-false, and other common question formats and gives feedback to your learners during the assessment, specific to the question or the user’s response. You’ll also be able to create follow-up assessments to automatically test learners based on the interval sets you choose.

Continue to Grow Your AMA/ACCME Initiatives

The future of CME continues to grow with the collaboration of ACCME and the AMA, as they view CME as being more beneficial for physicians in terms of innovation and flexibility in educational standards. EthosCE believes that today’s CME technology will improve your learners’ AMA and ACCME experience, as well as comply with the latest core requirements.

To learn how EthosCE can help you address your CME initiatives as related to the ACCME and AMA collaborations, request a free 1-on-1 demo with one of our specialists today!