>>KOPELOW: Ron, there's a report issued by the American Hospital Association entitled, ‘Continuing Medical Education as a Strategic Resource.’ The cover says: More than 1,100 hospitals and health systems provided 35% of the accredited CME in 2013. How is your organization using this resource? So, it speaks to what we've talked about before, about continuing medical education as a strategic asset to people trying to affect change. They've made some recommendations to the hospital people, and I'm interested in reading them to you and getting your reaction to the evidence base, like what's behind them.
>>CERVERO: Right.
>>KOPELOW: So the first one is: That people should use CME to advance strategic goals and engage physicians as partners in strengthening organizational competencies.
>>CERVERO: Yeah.
>>KOPELOW: Evidence to support that?
>>CERVERO: Absolutely. I mean that's what we know about the effect of, effective CME, is if it's done within an organizational context, it's aligned with the goals and the financing and all the organizational levers you can pull, that's what's going to make CME more effective, but at the same time, will advance the organization's goals. I mean, that's a critical proposition.
>>KOPELOW: The next one is, and let's assume that traditional CME is lecture CME. They say: Consider the use of existing non-traditional CME applications to encourage improvements efforts and physician engagement in strategically-oriented CME.
>>CERVERO: Yeah, right. So, what we know from the evidence and all of these reports I've done, that things like active learning are, if you can count that as non-traditional, not a lecture, is one of the key principles that has been demonstrated to increase the effectiveness of CME. So yeah, definitely.
>>KOPELOW: For sure. Encourage stronger links between CME and quality improvement.
>>CERVERO: Yeah.
>>KOPELOW: Make sense?
>>CERVERO: Absolutely. Again, that's the connection of a practice-based continuing medical education is, the dream that many of us have had for many years. And when you can combine it with the organizational systems around performance improvement, it's a marriage made in heaven.
>>KOPELOW: You're a strong believer in needs assessment. They recommend: Use community health assessment and other available data to inform CME.
>>CERVERO: Yeah, sure. Well, good data, not just from where care is delivered, but certainly from the community where patients live, is critical information that needs to be brought into the process.
>>KOPELOW: And the last one is probably strongly linked to your whole career on continuing professional education, not just medical education: Encourage interprofessional and team-based learning opportunities.
>>CERVERO: Yeah, absolutely. I mean we know that care is provided in teams. It's really always been provided, but now, there's much more of a collaborative spirit, and systems are set up to encourage and support that. And so, that's really, if you're going to have effective CME, it really needs to be with an understanding of all the providers in that system.
>>KOPELOW: All the healthcare providers?
>>CERVERO: All the healthcare providers in that system, yeah.
>>KOPELOW: Thanks, Ron.
>>CERVERO: Yeah.
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This is a transcript of Discussion of the AHA Report “CME as a Strategic Resource” - http://www.accme.org/education-and-support/video/interview/cme-strategic-resource
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