unprecedented change in the health-care environment and in health-care education,” said PaulWeber, the Alliance for CME’s executive director. “Health-care reform has shone a spotlight on health-care delivery, and there’snowa federal mandate for electronicmedical records. People are more concerned than ever before about performance, and they want to get the best bang for their buck. And due to economic pressures and manpower shortages, it’s often possi- ble for patients to be attended by physician’s assistants, nurse practitioners, techs, and pharmacists. Health-care delivery is now very mucha teamsport.” And while the CME programs offered at
medical meetings are very much a part of those teams’ training regimens, the indus- try organizations that support them— including the Alliance forCMEand the Global Alliance for Medical Educa- tion (GAME)—want them to stay that way. Which means adapting quickly to changes in health care, and working to help medical meet- ing planners and other CME providers stay on top of their games. Many of the Alliance’s and GAME’s efforts are rooted in theirownmeetings.
MEDICAL MEETINGS
grams, an exam prep course for certification by the National Commission for CME, and three compe- tency-based certificate programs—for the Best Prac- tices in Assessment and Evaluation, Directing Physician Self-Assessment for Learning and Change, and Facil-
ON_THE_WEB
Rethinking the Mission All of the changes that Weber outlined — health-care reform, economic upheaval, the dig- ital revolution—led Alliance forCMEleaders to decide they needed to take an interdisciplinary approach to provid- ing training.“We need to focus beyond certified CME,”Weber said. “Our approach will be muchmore inclusive, and we will collaborate with other organizations that produce health-care education, because we all want the same results: improved health-care outcomes.” Not that the Alliance is moving away from its traditional focus onCMEfor physicians. Rather,Weber said, it’s broadening its scope. “Effective edu- cation can’t just be focused on that physician,” he said. “It has to include the entire health-care team.” In its efforts to prepare CME providers for
the new challenges they face, the Alliance offers a variety of programs and resources—anchored by a series of live events. In addition to the Alliance Annual Conference, which is based on peer-reviewed abstracts and draws about 1,600 attendees, there are educational meetings for medical specialty societies, an annual “basics” institute forCMEnewbies, and a three-day lead- ership institute each October for experienced CME professionals. To complement its face-to-face meetings,
ACMErecently launched its first online training initiative, Competency Assessment and Lifelong Learning Series (CALLS), which offers three dif- ferent modules that are designed for self-directed learning. The modules include an in-depth review of skills needed to manage CME pro-
AWHOLE NEWWORLD: “There is more and more interest on behalf of CME providers,”GAME Presi- dent Paul Piché said, “to become more global in their approach to CME.”
For more information about the Alliance for Continuing Medical Education, visit www.acme-assn.org.
itating Improvements in Healthcare by Addressing Barriers cre- dentials. The CALLS program takes an innovative approach to self-directed learning, because eachmodule combines indi- vidual study with weekly conference calls with facilitators who are leading experts on the topics under discussion. As the health-care industry evolves, the Alliance is deter- mined to continue changing right along with it. “It’s an exciting time for medical education,”Weber said. “There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth over health-care reform, but if you take the politics out of it, the discussion is helpful. It’s forcing all of us to look at how we deliver patient care. Med- ical education can no longer empha- size seat time; it has to be learning that facilitates practice-based change in patient outcomes. The new form ofCME needs to be focused on the patient and how care is delivered.”
Going Global GAME was founded in 1995 by Lewis Miller — a publisher of CME materials who had started the Alliance for CME two decades earlier. While Miller remained involved with the Alliance, he launched GAME in an effort to
focusmore on the international development and distribution of CME materials. Over the past several years, that international focus has become increasingly important as the push to establish CMEstandards in developing countries has grown, and asCME programs have become more standardized across the globe. “In the beginning, GAME included a very small group of people, butnowit has gained momentum,” said Paul Piché, pres-