Welcome to the August ‘19 edition of AOE Compliance Connection, AOE’s monthly newsletter. As summer draws to a close, we are hard at work to keep you up to date on the latest CME news and enterprise updates. This month, we focus on ACCME Accreditation with Commendation, and also share our analysis of the ACCME’s 2018 Annual Report data, which was recently released.
We strive to serve you and your CME/CE team on many platforms. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook to stay updated and get our weekly compliance tip! Visit aoeconsulting.com to see what’s all available. We are here to help!
Approaching the New Menu of Criteria for Accreditation with Commendation
With the November 2019 Cohort the last ACCME Cohort eligible to choose between the prior Commendation Criteria (C16 – C22) and the New Menu of Criteria for Accreditation with Commendation (C23 – C38), now is the time for accredited providers to assess their CME programs and develop a strategic plan for how to address the new criteria.
The New Menu of Criteria for Accreditation with Commendation consists of 16 criteria (C23 – C38) across five different categories: Promotes Team-Based Education, Addresses Public Health Priorities, Enhances Skills, Demonstrates Educational Leadership and Achieves Outcomes. This menu allows accredited providers to demonstrate compliance with any seven criteria of their choice, from any category, plus one criterion from the Achieves Outcomes category for a total of eight criteria.
Knowing where to begin or how to choose may seem overwhelming. The following steps can help provide a framework for approaching the new menu of criteria.
Determine Program Size
The first step is to determine your organization’s program size. Program size refers to the number of activities during an accreditation term and impacts the number of examples that an accredited provider will be required to submit for certain criteria.
Red, Yellow, Green
Gather your CME program team and go through the rationale, critical elements and standards for each criterion. As you go, indicate whether the criterion is red, yellow or green as follows.
- Green = Criterion is a best fit as the organization is already poised to meet the criterion or is able to take clear steps to ensure that the Criterion, Rationale and Critical Elements are met, and the Standard fulfilled.
- Yellow = The organization is not currently meeting the criterion but could outline a plan to achieve compliance with the criterion, if necessary, to fulfill the 8-criteria threshold.
- Red = Criterion is not a best fit as the organization is not poised to meet this criterion based on current scope and strategic priorities.
Achieves Outcomes
Since at least one criterion from the Achieves Outcomes category is required, spend time focusing on this category to ensure that the organization has a clear plan in place to meet compliance with at least one of the three criteria in this category (C36 – C38).
Create a Plan and Timeline
Begin to outline a plan to implement processes and procedures to ensure that the rationale, critical elements and standards are met for the selected criteria. Depending on the scope of work associated, the plan may be short-term (3 to 6 months) or long-term (1 year+). Be sure to consider all stakeholders who will need to be involved to ensure that the plan is successfully implemented.
If your organization is seeking more information regarding the New Menu of Criteria for Accreditation with Commendation or feeling overwhelmed with where to start, please contact us at inquire@aoeconsulting.com.
Analysis of ACCME 2018 Annual Report Data
The ACCME’s 2018 Annual Report data was released on July 17, 2019 and, as it does each year, highlights continued growth and key takeaways.
The report highlights information from approximately 1,750 accredited CME providers offering nearly 180,000 accredited CME activities.
The report in its entirety can be viewed here, or for a quicker summary, you can view AOE’s analysis of the data on our website.
A few highlights of our analysis include:
- A noteworthy shift in data regarding participants at CME activities. For the first time, non-physician participants (57%) at CME activities have surpassed physician participants (43%).
- The number of educational activities and participants continue to increase and have each year since 2010. This growth and shift in learner type further supports the increasing availability of high-quality CME activities that promote interprofessional learning and continued evolution of healthcare, to support clinicians in delivering quality healthcare to patients.
- Three-year trend data shows the number of physician participants has increased by 1.94% while the number of non-physician participants at CME activities has increased by 70.83% since 2016.
- While the number of physician learners has remained steady over the past three years, the number of non-physician participants from 2017-2018 increased by nearly 8 million learners, leading to the large spike in the summarized trend data.
Accreditation Board Bulletin
Part of the service AOE provides to readers are weekly compliance tips and monthly CME/CE community news for ACCME, ANCC and ACPE.
ACCME
As we shared in last month’s edition of AOE Compliance Connection, the ACCME introduced a new Annual Accreditation Fee tiered pricing structure in June. For some providers, more clarification was needed to understand the categories the ACCME utilized to determine the appropriate tier for their organization, and the associated fee.
What exactly does “Average Learner Interactions Per Year” mean? Does this include all learners – both physicians and non-physicians – or does it simply include the learners who claim CME credit at any given activity? The answers to these questions provide guidance to accredited providers as they complete annual reporting via the Program and Activity Reporting System (PARS).
In response to this question, the ACCME’s requirement is that “accredited providers are asked to report activities and learners – not learners who claim/earn credit – because the engagement in the education is far more valuable than credit numbers might indicate.” The learner interactions that should be counted are, in fact, all learners and not just the individuals who claim credit, as each CME activity benefits all who participate.
As the ACCME determined your organization’s tier, keep in mind the factors they considered: average annual activities and average learner interactions. You can find more information on the ACCME’s new tiered fee structure here.
ANCC
For accredited continuing nursing education (CNE) activities, contact hours are awarded to nurse learners by the accredited provider. In order to do so, during the planning process, the planning committee, inclusive of the nurse planner, must determine the criteria that learners must meet in order to receive contact hours. Some examples of appropriate criteria might include participation in the activity, attendance time, completion and passing of a post-test, completion of an evaluation form or successful completion of a return demonstration.
Once the criteria for awarding credit hours are defined, the amount of contact hours for an activity must be determined. Activities are only eligible for awarding contact hours during portions of the activity that are solely for the learning experience plus the time spent for evaluating the activity. The measurement to award contact hours is 1 contact hour = 60 minutes and providers must round down to the nearest 1/10th or 1/100th of an hour.
Documentation should be kept supporting the contact hour calculation for all activities. Examples of such are as follows:
- Agenda for the activity (live activity)
- Outline of content to be delivered in the activity (live activity)
- Pilot study (enduring material)
In live activities, breaks and meals should be clearly identified to learners and the time cannot be included in the final contact hours awarded.
Contact hours are always given proactively, with the exception of participants in a pilot study. Once a pilot study has been completed and the number of contact hours has been determined, participants in the pilot study may be awarded contact hours.
ACPE
Last month, the ACPE Board of Directors announced that Janet P. Engle, PharmD, PhD (Hon), FAPhA, FCCP, FNAP will assume the role of Executive Director. The previous Executive Director, Peter H. Vlasses, PharmD, DSc (Hon.), FCCP, retired on June 30, 2019 after 20 years in the role.
Prior to this position with the ACPE, Dr. Engle worked as the Senior Associate Dean for Professional and International Affairs and Professor of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy. Her long history in the field of pharmacy uniquely qualifies her for this new position in which she will oversee leadership of the organization as a whole, budget development, collaborations, the strategic elements of the organization’s operations.
In their recent press release, the ACPE states the following about Dr. Engle: “Dr. Engle is a highly accomplished and widely recognized leader within the profession, serving as president of the American Pharmacists Association (APhA), as a member of the Board of Directors for the Board of Pharmacy Specialties (BPS), and as a former voting member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Nonprescription Drug Advisory Committee. Dr. Engle has been named as a Fellow for both APhA and the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) and was elected as a Distinguished Practitioner in the National Academies of Practice in Pharmacy. Within ACPE, Dr. Engle has engaged as an ACPE Site Team Evaluator for 27 years and was a member of the International Commission (IC) during the last seven years, including serving as the Chair.”
Dr. Engle will assume the new role in September 2019.
- Professional Degree Program Evaluator Training Workshop
September 19-20, 2019, Chicago, IL
Read More >> - Beginner CME for MOC: Ask Your Questions Webinar
September 24, 2019, Online
Read More >> - ANCC National Magnet Conference
October 10-12, 2019, Orlando, FL
Read More >> - Advanced CME for MOC: Ask Your Questions Webinar
November 19, 2019, Online
Read More >> - CPE Accreditation Commission Meeting
November 19-21, 2019, Chicago, IL
Read More >>
