Welcome to AOE’s May 2024 edition of AOE Compliance Connection, our monthly newsletter. This month, we bring you news about a welcome Alliance deadline-extension, another helpful compliance check from the ACCME VP, and the final installment in our series on the trickiest ACCME commendation criteria and how to avoid the pitfalls!
As the weather gets warmer and we move towards summer, make sure your CE team stays informed and compliant. Take a minute to follow AOE on social media to get helpful weekly tips, industry updates, and pertinent communication.
Alliance Deadline Extension
Earlier this month, the ACEHP announced that the call for abstract submissions for the Alliance 2025 Annual Conference has been extended to Friday, May 17. Providers who still want to participate can submit abstracts that contribute to the conference theme of “Expand Perspectives, Inspire Possibilities”. The ACEHP invites you to join the conversation and “dive into our mission of amplifying voices in healthcare CPD and revolutionize CE/CPD by viewing old problems with fresh eyes”.
Providers can submit with this link and find submission checklists (abstracts and posters) as well. The ACEHP encourages presentations to be creative and include a “how-to” component to assist attendees in putting the session information into practice. Formats can be creative as well, including options like panel discussions, Q&A, debates, interviews, and other options.
Compliance Help: Understanding ACCME’s Exception 2 to Standard 3
Recently, Dion Richetti, ACCME Vice President of Accreditation and Recognition, published a helpful Compliance Check for accredited providers. He again focused on Standard 3 and how understanding the exceptions can ease the administration burden of your CE team.
He reminds providers of the heartbeat of exception 2 to Standard 3: That accredited providers do not need to identify, mitigate, or disclose relevant financial relationships for “accredited education where the learner group is in control of content, such as spontaneous case conversations among peers.”
The definition of “spontaneous case conversation” is important to this exception. It refers to a conversation between two (or more) learners that was not planned ahead of time. For example, if two physicians have an unplanned conversation in a hallway and then write down their findings and report the change (in order to gain CE credit). Since the learner group was in control of content, this qualifies as a spontaneous case conversation, and the provider doesn’t need to identify, mitigate, or disclose financial relationships.
Anything planned ahead of time would not qualify as a spontaneous case conversations. The ACCME offers the examples of case conferences, RSSs, department rounds, and tumor boards.
More ACCME Compliance Check posts can be found here!
AOE Spotlight on Commendation: Achieves Outcomes
AOE regularly assists many providers in demonstrating compliance during accreditation and reaccreditation processes not only with the Core Accreditation Criteria, but also with the Commendation Criteria set forth by the ACCME. Over these months, we’ve been taking a deep-dive into each of the five categories to highlight specific criteria that historically are most likely to trip up providers during the accreditation process.
In January, we covered the “Promotes Team-Based Education” category with a focus on IPCE. In February, we discussed “Addresses Public Health Priorities”, and focused on the sometimes-nebulous term “population health”. In March, we continued with “Uses Support Strategies”, one of four criteria in the “Enhances Skills” category. Last month, we looked at “Demonstrates Educational Leadership” and narrowed in on how to best demonstrate creativity and/or innovation.
This month, we wrap up the series with a look at the final category: “Achieves Outcomes”, which focuses on data that demonstrates improvement. Providers desiring commendation must include at least one of these criteria in their selection. The three criteria can each be tricky in their own right: “Improves Performance”, “Improves Healthcare Quality” and “Improves Patient/Community Health”.
Of the three, providers tend to struggle most with the third: “Improves Patient/Community Health” which requires that providers demonstrate the impact of their CME program on patients or on their communities. This criterion requires that providers be intentional about collaborations; everything that drives physician change in competence or performance increases public health.
According to the ACCME, measures of patient or community health can be self-reported by patients and/or members of the community. Providers can set their own goals and offer evidence for how achievement of goals contributed to improvement in health outcomes for individuals and/or communities served. Further, per the ACCME, patient or community health “are the health characteristics or outcomes related to individuals or to groups of individuals within a geographic location, service area, or other grouping. Health and health outcomes can include incidence and/or prevalence of disease, mortality, vaccinations, nutrition, and social determinants (for example, healthy behaviors, safe environment).”
In order to meet this criterion, a CME provider must demonstrate improvement in patient or community health in areas related to the CME program at least twice during the accreditation term.
While population health can be tricky, the good news is that it can be a localized population (such as a VA hospital or a small community); a provider just needs to demonstrate clearly the link between the educational interventions and their impact on population health. The ACCME has stated that the most common reason providers do not successfully demonstrate compliance is that they do not demonstrate that the improvements were connected to the CME program.
What are some ways providers can demonstrate compliance?
The ACCME has posted a series of compliance and noncompliance here to help providers gain clarity. Here are a few examples:
Compliance:
- The provider worked with two patient groups to disseminate content to the patient community and improve the community’s educational efforts. For example, the provider collaborated with patient advocacy organizations to disseminate abstracts through a “special reporter” status to the patient community. Interviews with thought leaders in those content areas were available by live streaming to the community and patients were invited to the annual meeting. Patients reported an improvement in their confidence to manage their own health and that they were more empowered to engage in shared decision making with their physicians.
Non-Compliance:
- The provider described a study that identified a population health need, but the provider did not demonstrate actions taken to improve, or outcomes related to, the population’s health.
- In the examples presented by the provider, they described learner intent to change and an expanded reach to learners. The provider did not demonstrate, with this information, improvement in patient or community health outcomes.
The ACCME has a number of resources available on their website including FAQs and Examples of Compliance. If you are interested in training and/or strategic planning as related to Accreditation with Commendation, please contact AOE Consulting at inquire@aoeconsulting.com.
Upcoming Events
- Learn to Thrive 2024: ACCME’s Annual Meeting
May 14-16, 2024, Chicago, IL
Read More >> - Alliance 2025 Abstract Submission Deadline
May 17, 2024, online
Read More >> - PARS/JA-PARS Training
May 22, 2024, online
Read More >> - SACME’s PRiME (Promoting Research in Medical Education) Meeting
June 18-24, 2024, Toronto, Canada
Read More >>
