gram. “But what we’ve been doing more recently is virtual chart pulls, and ask- ing learners to track some of their patients, so we can measure even more about how the education got drilled down to actually affecting the patient,” Pagano said. “And that’s the penultimate goal — to measure patient outcomes.” This can be difficult, depending
“What we’ve been
doing is virtual chart pulls, asking learners to track
on the discipline. In oncology, for example, patients’ potentially shorter-term longevity makes it hard to measure outcomes. “For an oncol- ogist, to us it’s more about knowledge,” Pagano said. “Do they know the studies that are out there? Do they know all available treatment options?” Onthe other hand, learning areas such as diabetes education
some of their patients, so we can measure how the education got drilled down.”
lend themselves to longer-termmeasurement.“Oneof your learn- ing objectives could be, you want to lower the blood-sugar level in 75 percent of your patients,” Pagano said, “and we’re going
to teach you how to do that.” That’s the final frontier, as the two survey respondents quoted on p. 50 also indicated: patient outcomes. “It’s easy tosay we can change physician behavior,” Pagano said, “but demon- strating population health is going to be the next hurdle.” And not an impossible one. The
MEDICAL MEETINGS
Institute recently conducted an oph- thalmology CME activity in which it asked 10 physicians to track 10 patients each over the course of three
months. As a result, “we were able to demonstrate that the education made a big dif- ference in how they diagnosed and treated those
patients,” Pagano said. “And ultimately the patients all did very well.”
Hunter R. Slaton is a senior editor of Convene.
DoYou CMEWhat I CME?
Health-care reform, technology, and other forces are changing how continuing medical education is delivered—and spurring the evolution of organizations like the Alliance for CME and the Global Alliance for Medical Education.
54 BY NANCY MANN JACKSON
For 35 years, the Alliance for ContinuingMedical Education has served CMEproviders that offer programsdesigned primarily for physician audi- ences. But at the 2011 Alliance Annual Conference in San Francisco this past January, the organization announced that it would be broadening its focus to include continuing educationandprofessional development for all health-care professionals.