Continued Medical Education Effectiveness - Evaluation of an AAFP CME Program

This study was conducted from January 2010 through October 2010 and funded by a grant from AAFP CME Division. We partnered up with AAFP Continuing Medical Education to assess whether CME courses change clinician behavior. With the aid of AAFP NRN’s Distributed Ambulatory Research in Therapeutics Network (DARTNet), we compared clinicians who attend a specific CME program to clinicians who do not attend in order to assess outcomes related to the CME program. Our goal of the study was to determine if clinicians who participate in a CME course change their care of patients with diabetes and if the changes affect patient care process measures or intermediate clinical outcomes.

Specific Aims and Objectives:

1. To determine whether primary care providers who participate in the CME Live course on Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease make changes in patients’ diabetes care in response to their participation in the course.
2. To interview participants about what changes they plan to make in their care of diabetic patients in response to their participation in the CME course.
3. To compare primary care providers who participated in the CME course to primary care providers in their practices who did not participate in the course on changes in diabetes care.