Highlights

We’re delighted to announce that the Medical Board of California (MBC) has joined the ACCME and State Medical Boards Collaboration, an initiative that will reduce burdens and streamline the CME reporting process for your learners who are licensed in California. 

How will it work? 
Beginning later this year, you’ll have the opportunity to report data about California licensees who have completed your CME activities into the ACCME Program and Activity Reporting System (PARS). The MBC will have the ability to view this data to more readily determine that physicians who are requesting re-licensure have fulfilled California’s expectations for CME participation. This will greatly streamline the process for physicians, who will not have to report that data themselves, and it will simplify the audit review process for MBC. The ACCME is offering the service free of charge to the MBC, accredited providers, and licensees.

What is the benefit of participation?
By decreasing the administrative burden of CME reporting, you provide additional value for your learners—enabling them to spend less time tracking and uploading CME credits and dedicate more of their time to high-quality learning — and most importantly, to patient care. By reporting the data in PARS at the time of activity completion, you’ll reduce your work responding to subsequent queries and transcript requests from physicians.

How do I participate?
Participation is optional for accredited providers. If you are interested, terrific! We encourage you to begin preparing now. In addition to reporting your activities into the ACCME Program and Activity Reporting System (PARS), you will have the most success if you take the following steps:

• Report the learner-completion data that you are already keeping in your internal systems into PARS.
• Offer this service to your physician learners who are licensed in California, and, with their permission, report the following data for each learner who completes an activity:
  • Activity ID
  • First name
  • Last name
  • Date of birth (MM/DD only) 
  • CA License # *
  • Activity completion date
  • Number of AMA PRA Category 1™ credits 

* You can retrieve the CA License # here to improve the accuracy of learner matching.

If you have registered activities that count for Maintenance of Certification/Continuing Certification for any of the certifying boards collaborating with the ACCME, you will find the learning reporting process to be similar.

When can I start?
The functionality will be live with the launch of the new, improved PARS, scheduled for later this year. The new PARS will include fields enabling you to upload learner-completion data for all of your accredited CME activities and learners, including the ability to enter the information above for California licensees. For more information and updates, please visit the New PARS webpage.

How can I get ready now?
We encourage you to prepare now with the following steps:

• If you are not already collecting learner-identity data, determine how you will collect the information described above.
• If you have a consistent set of learners (such as members or employees) you can enter this identifying information into your systems at one time.
• If you include new learners for many of your activities, you can plan on collecting this information at the time of registration or when they attend.
• Enter current and future activities prospectively into PARS, so that after the launch of the new PARS, you’ll be ready to add your learner data. Any data you enter into PARS now will be migrated over to the new PARS —you will not need to reenter any data.

Inform your learners who are licensed in California about your participation in the collaboration so they can anticipate that their data will be reported for them as described above.

What methods can I use to report learner-completion data?
You’ll be able to report learner-completion data using several methods that may be familiar to you: web form entry, Excel batch upload, XML batch upload, and web services. We’ll provide templates and more information closer to the launch date.

Is the data secure and legally compliant?
As always, the ACCME and its data systems will be compliant with all applicable data privacy laws and regulations.

Will learner data be sold?
No. The ACCME does not share the data beyond its use for CME learner-data reporting and does not sell any data. 

What is the ACCME and State Medical Boards Collaboration?
During the past few years, the ACCME and several medical boards collaborated in a pilot project to enable CME providers to report physician participation in accredited CME to the boards via PARS, with the goal of reducing burdens on physicians. Based on the success of the pilot, the ACCME has extended the collaboration to include any state medical boards that choose to participate. The ACCME is offering the service free of charge to medical boards, accredited providers, and licensees. For more information, please visit the State Medical Boards Collaboration webpage.

How do I get support?
ACCME staff are happy to help! Please reach out to info@accme.org with your questions.