We undertook this survey to identify and prioritize opportunities to improve our services to your department. To support positive advances and move from a compliance orientation to one of continuous improvement, CME needs to emphasize clinical integration, performance improvement, and system-based practice in its activities. How you perceive the potential value of the Division of CME and its activities to your department is critical to aligning CME with organizational and departmental goals to increase our contribution as a value-adding entity to UAB units that share a similar view of CME activities.
The survey was sent to 40 UAB division directors for whom CME is a baseline requirement for practice, we received 19 responses (47.5%). The results are presented below.
Thanks,
Your CME Team
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Results Summary
- Medical knowledge and improving quality of care remain the top perceived added value aspects of a CME program
- CME activities are perceived to be relatively effective in ensuring physicians put new knowledge into practice and that physicians can provide accurate information to their patients
- You expressed substantial interest in engaging with the UAB CME team to help physicians earn MOC Part II credit
- There was a moderate recognition of the potential of CME to contribute to a department's strategic objectives - an avenue we would like to explore further
- There was moderate interest in our potential to support resident education through program analysis
- You expressed substantial interest in the potential of CME activity and services to increase the external profile of departments. We work with UAB physicians, the UAB Health System, and several medical education organizations to develop CME content that can showcase UAB faculty expertise and system standard of care. Here's a recent example of a project highlighting the integrated care provided by the 1917 clinic.
If you have a specific need that you think we can help with, we'd very much like to work with you and your faculty to support you.
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Action Plan
- Outcomes assessment as a mechanism to enhance education effectiveness is at the top of our agenda, so if you're interested in working on an assessment project for your education program, please email us and we can arrange a meeting with the appropriate person to discuss details.
- We have implemented several projects for awarding MOC Part II credit for both live events and regularly scheduled series and can investigate, develop, and deploy options for your specialty
- We have conducted longitudinal resident program analysis to identify areas for specific attention. There may be opportunities for enhancement at the margins in your program.
- We can accommodate online activity evaluation and can customize for series and events. Please have your administrator email us if you would like to participate
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Overall Value of CME
Perception of the overall value of CME centers on the domains of increasing knowledge and improving quality of care.,with 12 of 13 respondents ranking increasing knowledge as either 1 or 2, and sevent ranking improving quality as either 1 or 2, out of the 6 value-add items presented ( Six respondents did not answer this question). The weighted average score in the graph below reflects an assignment of 6 points to a ranking of most important (#1), 5 points to a ranking of second most important, etc.
It is interesting to note that you do not perceive much contribution of CME activities to improving team work - an area, along with care coordination, heavily emphasized by our accrediting body, ACCME, as key to effective educational programs. Certainly, very effective team education is being conducted within your programs, what CME can bring to the table is analysis and design of activities to see if there's any opportunities for enhancement.
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Effectiveness of CME
16 of 19 respondents see CME as effective in ensuring physicians can provide accurate information to patients (a 3 or 4 ranking), with a similar number seeing CME as effective in both helping physicians understand indications and contraindicaitons and put new knowledge into practice.
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Interest in New Services
You are most interested in how we can help provide MOC Part II opportunities for physicians:
We have implemented several efforts to provide MOC Part II credit for live activities, regularly scheduled series, and enduring materials. -
Usefulness of CME
Overall, respondents think that CME could provide opportunities to raise departmental profiles. We're very interested in discussing this further:
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Overall Value of CME