Last month, the Center for Business Intelligence (CBI) held a Medical Education Forum entitled, “Improve Outcomes through Collaboration to Maximize the Quality of Patient Care.” The forum, provided a platform where industry, continuing medical education (CME) professionals and CME, providers could collaborate with one another to better the design and outcomes of CME programs. The forum recognized the importance of industry and providers working together to progress the way they teach physicians, demonstrate outcomes, and advocate in the community for CME activities. Below is a summary of some of the presentations.
Walter Wolyneic – Forward Health Group, Inc.
Mr. Wolyneic’s presentation focused on the “Get the Facts Campaign!!,” run through the National Task Force for CME. In his presentation, he described the nature and mission of the Task Force, and explained the Campaign. Specifically, he noted that the Campaign is a national effort to disseminate factual information on issues that are important and relevant to the CME community. The Taskforce distributes Fact Sheets on an ongoing basis. Accordingly, Mr. Wolyniec told participants to use the Fact Sheets and Campaign by:
- Posting them on your company/institution/association website
- Disseminating them with a Call to Action campaign to your employees and/or association members
- Incorporating the factual information into presentations and publications
- Including a copy of the Fact Sheets in handouts to physician audiences
- Sending them to your local press, media, government officials, etc.
- Incorporating them into your departmental employee training manuals
- Sharing them with CME planning committees and faculty
Dion Richetti – General Manager, DIME
Mr. Richetti’s presentation went over the results from a recent Confidence-Based Learning CME activity entitled, “Overcoming Barriers in the Management of IBS-C.” He explained the methods of the program and then discussed the conclusions. Mr. Richetti noted that participants in the CME CBL activity increased their knowledge of and confidence in the management of IBS-C regardless of their specialty or baseline knowledge. In addition, he concluded that, CBL is an effective methodology for eliminating guesswork and misinformation in the management of patients with IBS-C.
Lisa Kekich – ACHL
Ms. Kekich’s presentation discussed ways to engage primary and secondary stakeholders in CME and offered a model for continuous improvement in healthcare outcomes. She noted that, “as the CME industry looks to emerge as a driver of improved quality of care and patient outcomes, comprehensive educational strategies reflective of the multifaceted healthcare environment are essential to realize these goals. Such strategies actively engage diverse stakeholders in healthcare and foster broad participation and collaboration to transform the reach and redefine the value of CME.”
She also noed that the current environment for CME collaborations are: 1) sought largely for endorsement purposes and fail to define the strategic and mission-driven value for each organization beyond financial remuneration; 2) fail to navigate the administrative and political barriers of each organization to make truly impactful improvements; or 3) fail to leverage human or financial resources outside of the organization to broaden the scope of delivery.
Accordingly, she asserted that CME providers must not only redefine collaboration, but operationalize an approach for successful engagement of collaborators and management of outcomes. She concluded her presentation by noting that although “financial and capacity limitations restrict the number of collaborations that can be pursued each fiscal year, this challenge can be overcome by earmarking resources to engage in 1-2 large scale initiatives annually. These large initiatives will give providers the opportunity to diversify funding streams, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the education being developed, deliver more sophisticated outcomes considerate of both CME criteria and public health variables, and influence healthcare practice and policy.
Todd Foster – Omnia Education, Inc.
Mr. Foster’s presentation centered on a CME program with the objective of Optimizing Patient Care in Preventative Medicine and more specifically, the Role of Vaccination for Specialty Providers. Mr. Foster went over the goals of the program as well as the results. Specifically, he noted that the program was part of a major shift in preventative medicine among women’s healthcare providers and that the outcomes data indicated a significant improvement in provider knowledge, competence, and performance. Additionally, he noted that CDC data indicated a major improvement in immunizations rates during the same time period. Ultimately, the data showed that the goal of increasing the rate of immunizations with appropriate guideline-based vaccines among healthy and pregnant women was achieved.
Steve Casebeer, MBA – Impact Education, LLC
Mr. Casebeer’s presentation focused on the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH). He discussed the outcomes measurements of knowledge and competence development related to a 1.5-hour continuing education activity which was presented as a live Webcast 3 times between April 14, 2010 and April 22, 2010. The educational outcomes measurement study was designed to measure whether participants learned key concepts regarding medication management strategies within a PCMH and whether participants applied this information within their practice setting.
He noted that of the respondents to the survey who indicated changes were made in day-to-day practice following participation in the CME/CPE activity, 80% indicated these changes had a beneficial effect on their patients’ health, impacting more than 1,450 patients in the 4 months following this CME/CPE activity. In addition, 60% of the respondents who indicated changes were made in day-to-day practice indicated these changes have become a routine part of their practice.
Christine Berger, CCMEP – Celgene, Corp.
Ms. Berger’s presentation discussed a standardized method to evaluate and communicate evaluation data to internal teams using a managed care oncology activity example. Celgene supported a 3.5 hour live satellite symposium at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy 2010 Annual Meeting. The live meeting along with enduring educational activities targeted the managed care audience. The activities were designed to assist managed care providers in the pharmacologic management techniques for patients with multiple myeloma. Ultimately, Ms. Berger concluded that internal stakeholders find value in outcomes data and standardized templates allow for easier interpretation and presentation of the data by the teams and enhance the value of our educational program overall. In addition, she noted that the scientific education department continues to find the template a useful tool for data analysis and presentation within the organization.