January 2002 • Volume 8 • Number 1
With the new year come new CME opportunities
BY CINDY McCANSE
Raise a toast to a new Academy educational initiative! Beginning this month, AAFP-accredited CME providers gain the option of incorporating the principles of evidence-based medicine into their CME activities.
"It's very exciting," said Nancy Davis, Ph.D., director of the AAFP Continuing Medical Education Division. "We think this new option provides a real value to physician learners. It assures them that practice recommendations made during an evidence-based CME activity result from a systematic review of all the available evidence."
Goal of new system: to determine whether evidence-based learning improves physician performance and, ultimately, patient care. Defined as "the integration of current best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values," EBM has played a key role in medical school clinical training for several years. Early in 1999, the AAFP took up the challenge of reassessing its clinical CME accreditation system. Why? Partly in response to concerns by state medical licensing boards that accreditation systems then in use allowed CME credit for activities teaching or promoting unproven therapies. The reassessment led to new criteria for evaluating and categorizing CME clinical content.
Several external organizations provided input in developing the new initiative -- the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, American Board of Family Practice, American Osteopathic Association, AMA and Federation of State Medical Boards.
The concept is straightforward: CME clinical content is considered evidence-based if it is presented with practice recommendations supported by research evidence that has been systematically reviewed by an AAFP-approved source. See "AAFP-Approved Source of Sytematic Evidence Previews" for a list of those sources.
PROVIDERS HAVE OPTIONS
Under the new system, CME providers will indicate on the AAFP CME credit application form how many total Prescribed and/or Elective credit hours they are requesting and, of those, how many hours are being submitted for review as evidence-based CME. Evidence-based CME is optional and requires special documentation.
CME content based on customary and generally accepted medical practice remains eligible for Prescribed and/or Elective credit with no new documentation requirements.
Content that is neither evidence-based nor based on customary and generally accepted medical practice but is not dangerous is eligible for Elective credit only.
PACKETS RECEIVED; EVALUATION TO CONTINUE
AAFP-accredited CME providers and medical colleague organizations last month received a packet of information including an overview of the new system; categories, definitions and criteria for classifying CME clinical content; application forms; and step-by-step instructions on how to document evidence-based CME content, should this option be chosen.
It's expected that implementation of the new system will be phased in over the coming year, with continuous ongoing evaluation. After that, said Davis, "the next big step will be outcomes studies to look at the impact of all this." The goal, of course, is to determine whether evidence-based learning improves physician performance and, ultimately, patient care.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2002 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
FP Report | Headlines |AAFP Home | Search