Archive for September, 2010

SACME Fall Meeting

Monday, September 27th, 2010

Exciting things are happening at the fall SACME meeting. Don’t miss out on a great opportunity to expand your horizons. Use this link to review the entire program including the research/scholarship workshop.

http://www.sacme.org/index.cfm?pagepath=Meetings/2010__Fall__Washington_DC_&id=24160

The program in and of itself is wonderful. The presenters are dynamic and will truly enlighten you. The session on MedEdPortal is but one linkage into the greater AAMC meeting so consider not limiting yourself to the SACME meeting. Branch out into the greater AAMC meeting and create new collaborations for success in research, quality, safety, health information technology, and faculty development.
I hope to see you in Washington in November!

NIQIE Meeting

Monday, September 20th, 2010

This past week I attended a fascinating meeting by the National Institute for Quality Improvement and Education (NIQIE). NIQIE is working to facilitate collaboration between the education, information technology and performance improvement sectors.
The preconference was on PI- CME and Part IV of Maintenance of Certification. The main day of the meeting started with a presentation by Sachin Jain, MD, MBA on Meaningful use of HIT. Dr Jain is the Special Assistant to the national Coordinator for Health Information Technology and consequently this presentation was chockfull of tidbits about where the government sees HIT going and how the system is designed to have meaningful use HIT in place by 2014.

Proposed vs Final HIT Details

The remainder of the conference continued to focus on the intersection of HIT, PI and education and included hands on sessions for planning as well as presentations of some best practices.

CME updates:

Monday, September 13th, 2010

This weekend I will be attending the National Institute for Quality Improvement and Education (NIQIE) meeting in Chicago entitled, Mastering Continuous Performance Improvement. There is a wonderful workshop on Sunday followed by the meeting the subsequent days.

Then subsequently the Joint Working Group, which consists of the leadership of SACME and the leadership of the GEA-CME section of the AAMC are meeting in DC for an annual strategic retreat. Numerous exciting topics will be discussed including a meeting with some representatives from LCME for what should be an exciting discussion on standards related to lifelong learning.

Yesterday had a nice discussion with Dr Chaudhry from FSMB regarding CME and MOL as well as CME and its leadership in high-risk physician assessment and physician re-entry programs. Hoping that some collaborative projects will result.

Things Are Buzzing

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

There is a lot of activity in the CME space. Here are but a few of the things going on that will have significant impact on the CME world:

1) Maintenance of certification (MOC) is looking at clarifying the standards for MOC in a consistent manner that will help establish a common currency across boards. The MOC process may require specific types of CME while not accepting others. The process will likely migrate to look more and more like a CPD model.

2) The AMA is establishing a task force to look at how to use levels and grades of evidence in certified CME in order help make transparent the EBM aspect of CME materials.

3) The conjoint cmte is holding mixed stakeholder meetings per the IOM recommendation to look at alternate funding models and CME as well as to assess the present funding model to see if change is required and if so in what direction.

4) The IOM held a preliminary meeting to think through some aspects of a standard CME disclosure format as well as process standards. This is work that extends from the IOM report on conflict in research, education and practice.

5) Maintenance of licensure (MOL) is proceeding as an action item by the FSMB. This will likely link state licensure to MOC by the boards. This may impact those that previously grandfathered our of MOC and a separate pathway will be required for those that are not board certified.

6) The ACCME is moving forward with PARS and this electronic reporting system will impact providers who will have to adjust internal process to accommodate electronic reporting. Programming work will surely be required.

7) SACME has met and/or is continuing to meet with all those listed above as we help shape where CME of the future. We will also be meeting with LCME in a few weeks as well as we are trying to set up a discussion with NQF.