AOE Compliance Connection – May 2018 Newsletter

Welcome to the May edition of Compliance Connection, AOE’s monthly newsletter! 

We continually work to keep our partners and CME/CE stakeholders up to date with the latest CME/CE news along with the most recent activity of the ACME, ACPE, and ANCC.  This publication is one of the ways we do that – and we know you’ll benefit from the information and direction inside.

This month, along with accreditation board bulletins, you’ll find information regarding the ACCME’s New Strategic Goals, an AOE photo opportunity at a black tie event, and helpful information about managing live conferences!

For even more information, compliance tips and a look at the staff at AOE, please visit our webpage or reach out to us at inquire@aoeconsulting.com.

Last month, the ACCME Board of Directors, leadership and staff members participated in a strategic planning session to document and share their vision for the future.  The product of this strategy session is The ACCME Strategic Plan 2018-2021: Transforming Education to Improve Health, a document available for download here.  This brief report includes stakeholder interviews that lend insight and perspective, opportunities and challenges faced by the CME community, and a review of the ACCME trajectory thus far, including their recent initiatives and priorities.  

The report isolates six strategic goals:

1. Augment Awareness of CME’s Value
2. Assure Accreditation Quality and Equivalency
3. Accelerate the Evolution of CME
4. Assist CME Educators
5. Advance Data Systems
6. Advocate for CME Scholarship

To read more about each goal, download the brief report here.

Single or multi-day CME/CE conferences take significant planning and preparation to ensure compliance both in the front-end planning and day-of logistics. Further, it takes coordination both on the CME/CE side and on the meeting planning and logistics side. This often requires clear communication and collaboration between different stakeholders. AOE Consulting is well versed at managing and staffing live conferences. Here are some of our top tips:

• Create a Roles & Responsibilities Chart: Outline all actions that need to happen each day of the conference. Be as detailed as possible. Examples include: “place sign at entrance to meeting room,” “set up registration desk 10 minutes early,” “complete on-site monitoring for 2:00 PM presentation.” Outlining everything that must take place ensures that actions are not overlooked and can help influence on-site staffing for the activity.

• Ensure Appropriate Staffing: Based on the length and scope of the conference, build an appropriate on-site staffing plan. In developing the staffing plan, consider the number of registrants, whether there is an exhibit hall and the day-to-day actions. Certain days may require more individuals than others.

• Designate a Point-of-Contact for Faculty/Presenters: Faculty/Presenters often have last minute inquiries and almost always have an updated version of their presentation to upload to AV. It is helpful to have a designated staff member to manage speaker interactions and/or a dedicated space for speakers to visit to upload their presentation and ask any questions. 

• Send Reminders in Advance: Sending brief reminders to both activity registrants and activity faculty/presenters reinforces key information and can help prevent unnecessary inquiries. The key is to avoid over-e-mailing these stakeholder groups. Plan to send one final reminder e-mail to each group the day before the activity.

• On-Site Launch: Plan a brief huddle with your on-site team to officially launch the activity. Recap important information and roles/responsibilities and address any final questions your team might have. 

If your organization is looking to outsource meeting planning and logistics for your conference or needs help managing CME/CE compliance on-site, e-mail AOE at inquire@aoeconsulting.com. We’d love to hear more about your CME/CE activity!

AOE Consulting strives to demonstrate value outside the scope of CME/CE by engaging the community in unique ways. This past month, for the third year in a row, AOE supported the Annual Legacy Leaders Spring Gala hosted by Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU). Managing Director, Annika Borvansky, and Program Manager, Sarah Porter, attended the gala in support of the university and its mission to “…[cultivate] diverse health professional leaders who are dedicated to social justice and health equity for underserved populations through outstanding education, research, clinical service, and community engagement.” 

This year’s gala honored Loretta Jones, MA, ThD, for her long-term service to the community in addressing health disparities. 

The gala raised nearly $130,000 to support CDU’s student scholarships and pipeline programs.

As your team plans and designs a CPE activity, it is important to know what the ACPE expects of providers.  When it comes to awarding credit, the ACPE has some unique requirements that we’ll briefly review below.  

Each provider is expected to upload activity and pharmacist participant information online via CPE Monitor®, a collaborative service from the ACPE and the NABP, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy.  This tool creates a direct link for sending CPE data from ACPE-accredited providers to ACPE and then to NABP, ensuring that all reported CPE units are officially verified by ACPE-accredited providers.

For non-pharmacist learners, the provider is required to give evidence to each learner, in the form of a statement of credit within 60 days of participation in the CPE activity.

Each statement of credit for non-pharmacist learners must include the following items:  

• The name of the learner,
• The title and date(s) of the activity,  
• Type of activity: knowledge, application, practice,  
• The appropriate target audience designation (“P” or “T”)
• The accredited party providing or joint providing the activity,
• The official ACPE logo,  
• The amount of credit awarded,  
• The assigned ACPE Universal Activity Number,  
• The date the CPE Administrator signed the original statement of credit (either hand-written or electronically generated).  

If Providers do not submit activity and participant information online via CPE Monitor®, the provider could be placed on administrative warning or probation.  

To read more about this or other policies, you can find the entire Policies and Procedure manual available for download here.