Comments on: The future of CME http://www.medrants.com/archives/2323 Internal medicine, American health care, and especially medical education Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:15:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: RGL http://www.medrants.com/archives/2323/comment-page-1#comment-17817 RGL Tue, 05 Apr 2005 13:21:22 +0000 http://medrants.com/archives/2005/04/04/the-future-of-cme/#comment-17817 While still in practice and as one of the primary physicians in a managed care network in my community, a similar performance program was in place but on a more comprehensive scale. It was one of the ways the network employed to see if we were dispensing the type of care we were expected to give. Strictly, it was not the type of CME as we understand this to be, and were never given credits since the time spent was considered part of our practices. It was also successful in the respect that it kept us on our toes, with our membership in the network partly dependent on how we adhered to the program. Most of us still view CME as strictly didactic: attending meetings and seminars, listening to tapes, reviewing the latest medical literature with quizzes and passing grades to accumulate credits, taking computer courses, and so many other ways. After all, these are the types of activities we are required to document when applying for relicensure and for renewal of membership in hospital staffs. CME remains a thriving business, and some of the best courses are offered by top-notch centers like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Emory, UC-San Francisco, and the University of Miami. While still in practice and as one of the primary physicians in a managed care network in my community, a similar performance program was in place but on a more comprehensive scale. It was one of the ways the network employed to see if we were dispensing the type of care we were expected to give.

Strictly, it was not the type of CME as we understand this to be, and were never given credits since the time spent was considered part of our practices. It was also successful in the respect that it kept us on our toes, with our membership in the network partly dependent on how we adhered to the program.

Most of us still view CME as strictly didactic: attending meetings and seminars, listening to tapes, reviewing the latest medical literature with quizzes and passing grades to accumulate credits, taking computer courses, and so many other ways. After all, these are the types of activities we are required to document when applying for relicensure and for renewal of membership in hospital staffs.

CME remains a thriving business, and some of the best courses are offered by top-notch centers like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Emory, UC-San Francisco, and the University of Miami.

]]> By: David Toub, MD, MBA http://www.medrants.com/archives/2323/comment-page-1#comment-17752 David Toub, MD, MBA Mon, 04 Apr 2005 21:50:04 +0000 http://medrants.com/archives/2005/04/04/the-future-of-cme/#comment-17752 Great post-I'll have to blog about this as well (http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/index.html). I'm Chief Medical Officer at MedCases, an ACCME-accredited provider of online CME, and the outcomes issue is a hard one to solve. For starters, how do you do a real controlled trial proving that the education in and of itself has really led to improvements in clinical outcomes? It's also hard, if not problematic (HIPAA, etc) to get access to clinical data, and given so many variables involved in decision making, I'm not sure we can easily separate out the influence of a single CME program from many other ways physicians can learn to do the "right thing." Great post-I’ll have to blog about this as well (http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/index.html).

I’m Chief Medical Officer at MedCases, an ACCME-accredited provider of online CME, and the outcomes issue is a hard one to solve. For starters, how do you do a real controlled trial proving that the education in and of itself has really led to improvements in clinical outcomes? It’s also hard, if not problematic (HIPAA, etc) to get access to clinical data, and given so many variables involved in decision making, I’m not sure we can easily separate out the influence of a single CME program from many other ways physicians can learn to do the “right thing.”

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