What is in this article?:
- How to Achieve ACCME Accreditation with Commendation
- Criterion 16: The provider operates in a manner that integrates CME into the process for improving professional practice.
- Criterion 17: The provider utilizes non-education strategies to enhance change as an adjunct to its activities/educational interventions (e.g., reminders, patient feedback).
- Criterion 19: The provider implements educational strategies to remove, overcome, or address barriers to physician change.
- Criterion 20: The provider builds bridges with other stakeholders through collaboration and cooperation.
- Criterion 21: The provider participates within an institutional or system framework for quality improvement.
- Criterion 22: The provider is positioned to influence the scope and content of activities/educational interventions.
This is the second in a three-part series on the ACCME accreditation process for CME providers. The first details the ACCME's accreditation process; and the third shows how to bounce back after being placed on probation or receiving a progress report requirement.
In a video on the ACCME’s Web site, Kopelow calls the set of criteria with which providers must comply to achieve accreditation with commendation “a set of values or attributes that ACCME believes are the ones that can have the highest impact on healthcare, patient outcomes, and physician practice.” It also can seem out of reach for CME providers who don’t provide patient care services or have clinical and patient data. As an audience member at a session on achieving accreditation with commendation at the 2012 ACEHP conference said, “If we’re not a hospital or a medical school, how can we comply with things like Criteria 21 [which requires providers to participate ‘within an institutional or system framework for quality improvement.’]?”
To answer this question, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education has created the following example, putting itself in the role of an accredited provider. In this example, the ACCME’s CME mission is to enhance the competence and performance of CME professionals with respect to the ACCME requirements and in turn to enhance the competence, performance, or patient outcomes of their learners. The ACCME will seek to do this through its online resources, its live educational events, and its focused webconferences.
