News

ELECTION OF BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2024 OFFICERS

ACCME would like to welcome our new 2024 officers to the Board of Directors: Gay Wehrli, MD, MBA, MSEd, was elected Chair; Jon Thomas, MD, MBA, was elected Vice Chair; and Tammy McGee, MBA, was elected Treasurer of the ACCME at a meeting of its Board of Directors earlier this month. Read more about our impressive new officers!

THANK YOU TO THE ACCREDITED EDUCATION COMMUNITY

The ACCME is successful in its mission because of its dedicated volunteers. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all volunteers for their commitment to sustaining a high-quality, self-regulated CME system that advances clinician performance and patient care.

LISTEN TO THE NEW COFFEE WITH GRAHAM EPISODE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN HEALTHCARE 
Tune in to our new Coffee with Graham podcast episode on artificial intelligence! ACCME President and CEO, Graham McMahon, MD, MMSc sat down with Dr. Peter Clardy and Dr. Paul Jhun from Google to discuss the rise of artificial intelligence and how its use in the world of medicine can benefit continuing education and patient care. Listen here.

AMERICAN BOARD OF THORACIC SURGERY AND AMERICAN BOARD OF ORTHOPAEDIC SURGERY JOIN CME FOR MOC COLLABORATION
We’re pleased to share that the American Board of Thoracic Surgery (ABTS) and the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery (ABOS) have joined the CME for MOC Collaboration to allow digital reporting of continuing medical education (CME) and Continuing Certification/ Maintenance of Certification (CC/MOC) credits for thoracic and orthopaedic surgeons. The collaborations with ABTS and ABOS are two of several that ACCME has with other boards who use this quick and easy-to-use system for hundreds of thousands of doctors nationally.

To facilitate this digitization of learner data, accredited providers can now take the following actions:

• Review the CME for MOC Program Guide to learn about both programs.
• Log in to PARS to register any upcoming activities that meet ABTS or ABOS requirements.
• Report the credits that learners are issued into the system, so they can count towards learners’ ABTS CC or ABOS MOC requirements.

ACCME recently held training sessions for accredited providers to learn to report CME that counts for ABTS Continuing Certification (CC). Additionally, ACCME will conduct free one-hour training sessions for accredited providers to learn to report CME that counts for ABOS MOC. Register for a free training session below:

• December 20 at 3:00 PM Central Time
• January 10 at 3:00 PM Central Time

NEW BADGE FOR AMERICAN BOARD OF SURGERY ACTIVITIES 

The American Board of Surgery (ABOS) created a new badge to identify and promote CME activities that are registered for ABS Continuous Certification (CC) credit. If your activities count towards ABS CC, you are encouraged to include the badge in your activity materials or when advertising your educational activities that quality for ABS CC credits.

Save and download the badge above!

NEW RESEARCH GRANT PROGRAM AVAILABLE FROM ABMS RESEARCH AND EDUCATION FOUNDATION
 
The American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) Research and Education Foundation (REF) announced a new research grant program for independent investigators that offers two themes for research proposals: 

• The General Certification category, funded by the ABMS REF, seeks original, investigator-driven research to provide insight into the process of achieving and maintaining competency standards for certification by any of the 24 Member Boards, and which may help inform improvements in the structures, processes, and patient outcomes in certification generally. 
• The Diagnostic Excellence Through Certification category is principally funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and will support Member Boards and collaborating independent investigator’s research into the specific area of improving medical diagnosis.

All grants are for two years and will be based initially on a Letter of Intent (LOI) proposal which, if accepted, will be followed by a full submission for review and potential acceptance. Learn more about the grant program.

LEARNER CREDIT REPORTING MADE EASIER
Last Spring, ACCME solicited your input on ways to make learner credit reporting easier, and you asked for help to ease the administrative effort for learner credit reporting. With this in mind, we created a new feature in PARS to help accredited providers already reporting Maintenance of Certification/Continuing Certification (MOC/CC) credits.

About the New Feature
If you’re already reporting MOC/CC credits, ACCME will now perform a credit match – resulting in the creation of a CME credit that corresponds to the MOC/CC learner credit that you are reporting. This means that if you are reporting MOC/CC credits, you do not have to report the CME credit. ACCME will do that for you! Your physician learners can then create a free profile in CME Passport and see the credit reported as both MOC/CC and CME for their state licensing board.

If you are reporting only CME credits, please continue to do so – this feature does not impact credits being reported for CME alone.

As more state licensing boards utilize PARS for licensure audits, you can help your physicians by keeping their CME records current.

Questions? Contact info@accme.org.

Reminders for Accredited Providers

AMERICAN BOARD OF PATHOLOGY CREDIT TYPE CHANGE
In response to updates to the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) Continuing Certification guidelines, the American Board of Pathology (ABPath) is changing the language for their Part IV activities from “Improvement in Medical Practice” to “Improvement in Health and Healthcare.” This change will go into effect next month, in January 2024.

If you have an activity registered for ABPath Improvement in Medical Practice, you should have received an email with next steps. There has been no change to the definition of what counts; this is a name change only. No further action is needed if you do not have any activities registered for ABPath Improvement in Medical Practice.

What you can expect:

• Providers should not make any changes to their activities in PARS at this time. 
• ACCME will update the CME for MOC program resources and technical instructions to note that the change will occur in January 2024.
• On January 25, 2024, ACCME will update any activities currently registered for “Improvement in Medical Practice” to “Improvement in Health and Healthcare.” Learner credits that have already been accepted will also be updated to use the new language.
• Beginning on January 25, 2024, providers will need to use the new language when:
  • Registering a new activity for ABPath for Improvement in Health and Healthcare credit;
  • Updating an existing activity that is registered for “ABPath Improvement in Health and Healthcare credit”; and
  • Reporting learner credit for “ABPath Improvement in Health and Healthcare.”

If you have any questions about these changes, please contact dataservices@accme.org.

2024 ANNUAL ACCREDITATION FEE REMINDER 
Thank you to those of you who have already submitted payment for your 2024 annual accreditation fees! In September, we sent invoices to ACCME-accredited providers as well as those accredited by the California Medical Association, Massachusetts Medical Society, and Missouri State Medical Association (at the request of those state medical societies). Payment is due by January 31, 2024. The fee schedule is posted here.

Careers

The ACCME has two open positions:

• The Manager, Partnerships and Collaborations plays a crucial role in expanding our collaborations across all ACCME stakeholders. We are seeking a motivated and results-oriented individual who can leverage their industry knowledge, network, and business development skills to enable new collaborations and deepen existing collaborations across the CME ecosystem.
• The Program Support Analyst is responsible for providing support to ACCME providers, collaboration partners, staff, and volunteers in their use and understanding of PARS. With an orientation toward customer service, this person will support users in inputting data correctly and analyze ACCME’s data for quality and reporting purposes.