Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) recently released a short video describing how CME providers can improve their outcomes. The video, which included ACCME Chief Executive Murray Kopelow, discussed ACCME Criteria 18, 19, and 20 as opportunities to ensure CME makes a difference.
In Criteria 18, CME providers are asked to identify factors outside their control that impact on patient outcomes. Kopelow said that providers need to ask what is causing the outside factors; in other words, what else besides what the doctors know or the doctors do is causing this?
Criteria 19 says, providers implement educational strategies to remove, overcome or address barriers to physician change. Kopelow noted several questions CME providers must ask:
- What is blocking your effectiveness?
- What is it that is out there that’s preventing your educational intervention of getting these docs, who now know how to do something, to go out and change?
- What is it that we need to remove, overcome or address so that the doc can go out and care for the patients the way we are teaching them to?
In response to these questions, he noted that one strategy to overcome these challenges is Criteria 20: building bridges with other stakeholders through collaboration and cooperation. He said that CME providers should go out and find people in organizations that can help CME do better, that can help CME help the physicians provide better care.
In summary, he noted three questions and three Criteria.
- Criteria 18: What else is causing our problems and preventing changes in patient outcomes?
- Criteria 19: What’s blocking our effectiveness, so, what other educational strategies can we put into place to remove barriers to physician change? and
- Criteria 20: find people in organizations that can help us, can help CME do a better job.