Recently, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) released the ACCME Data Report: Rising to the Challenge in Accredited Continuing Education – 2020, which includes data from 1,680 accredited organizations that offer a variety of continuing medical education resources to promote high-quality, safe, and effective care for patients.
The report shows that despite the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, accredited providers adapted and redesigned learning environments to offer critically needed skills and support to physicians and their medical teams. Even with severe economic losses and a reduction in the number of activities, providers increased engagement with physicians and other healthcare professional learners by rapidly shifting to online and virtual learning environments. The ability to be so nimble highlights the strength and capacity of the accredited education community.
In the introduction to the report, Graham McMahon, MD, MMSc, ACCME President and CEO, spoke to the resiliency, noting, “I also recognize that the pandemic has taken a toll on our community. Many of you suffered personal illness and grieved the loss of loved ones and colleagues, while contending with enormous stress and change in work environments. As we pause and reflect on this painful time, I hope that you will take note of your ability to rise to the challenges we faced and that we continue to face. We leveraged teamwork to endure these difficult experiences and we will meet the upcoming challenges together with the same spirit of community.”
Overall, in 2020, approximately 1,680 accredited CME providers offered more than 170,000 educational activities, comprising more than 1 million hours of instruction and over 45 million interactions with healthcare professionals. Roughly half of those providers offered education that addressed the pandemic, with more than 3 million learner interactions.
In 2020, the activity types that engaged the most learners shifted from live courses and regularly scheduled series to online activities. Additionally, providers continued to offer blended, new, or other approaches that do not fall into one of the established activity types, which while still a relatively small group (only 628 in 2020), is increasing over prior years (409 in 2019).
In 2020, the number of learner interactions increased by 22% and 2020 was the third year in a row where other learner interactions (nonphysician healthcare professionals) surpassed physician interactions. In 2020, the number of total educational events decreased by 9% and hours of instruction decreased by 18%.
Reviewing the below chart put together by Rockpointe, using the data from the ACCME Report, CME total income is down 26.65% when compared year-over-year to 2019 – $3,058,907,317 in 2019 to $2,243,627,062 in 2020.
As one can see, the loss of mostly conference registration and advertising/exhibit income had a significant impact throughout the CME industry. It is likely that while some in-person events have, and will continue to, resume in 2021, there are still many who are uncomfortable in large groups and may not wish to return to live, in-person CME until 2022. It is likely that at that time, there will be pent up demand for such events.
Overall, certain sector of the CME community had a particularly difficult 2020 and overall income from CME is down. While things are not expected to normalize until 2022 or 2023, when live meetings return in full force, CME providers adapted to the needs of learners throughout the pandemic, and that is an incredible feat in and of itself.
The ACCME Data Report can be accessed here and the Supplement can be accessed here.