Welcome to the June 2026 edition of AOE’s Monthly Newsletter. This edition of AOE Compliance Connection includes a mid-year recap of our most commonly asked compliance questions, the final installment of our three-part series on learning outcomes, and a list of ACCME resources available to CE community professionals.
We wish you a terrific summer season ahead!
Accreditation Board Bulletin: Hot Tips
After a high volume and occasionally frenetic Q1 and Q2, the annual reporting and major conference dust has settled, and the accreditation boards are relatively quiet in June. (Cue a collective sigh). Since compliance is an always-on enterprise for our team, it’s a great time to recap the more popular, perennially relevant questions we get from our CME/CE colleagues. Take a peek to make sure your team is on track!
Q: There’s no need to include a disclosure to learners for a faculty member with no relevant financial relationships, right?
A: The ACCME requires that providers disclose both the presence AND absence of relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies. You need to formally state this for your learner, i.e., “The following individuals have no relevant financial relationships to disclose…”
Q: If a faculty member’s relevant financial relationship has ended, do we still need to disclose it to learners?
A: Yes! Providers must identify, mitigate and disclose all relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies for individuals in control of content, within the prior 24 months. You’ve identified the relationship; the end of the relationship serves as mitigation; the disclosure to learners is the last, required piece. If the relationship existed in the prior 24 months, it must be disclosed.
Q: How do I know if the activity is or isn’t related to the business lines of an ineligible company?
A: Standard 3 states that an activity is considered to be related to the business lines of an ineligible company when the content provides “any opportunity for the individual to insert commercial bias towards the products of the company”. They advise erring on the side of caution when determining relevance, since the protection of the learners should be prioritized over the inclusion of faculty members.
Overall, the ACCME states that the content drives this decision more so than the profession or area of specialization. You can find more information and specific case scenarios in their online guide. (Examples of Content that Is/Is Not Related to Ineligibility)
Q: Can we offer incentives (like gift cards) to our learners to increase evaluation completion/submission rates?
A: The ACCME does not prohibit the use of “modest gift cards for completing an evaluation or as raffles,” so yes, this is an acceptable incentive tool. Ensure that your organization is only using gift cards in this manner, and that you comply with ACCME’s Prohibition of Gift Cards or Personal Remuneration Associated with the Purchase of Accredited CME policy (detailed here).
Q: Is a 30-minute interval between accredited and non-accredited education required in virtual activities?
A: Standard 5.2 includes reference to a required 30-minute interval between accredited and nonaccredited education for live activities, whether in-person or online. For live, online activities, if the learner will remain in the same “virtual space” for a nonaccredited session, then the provider must ensure that there is a 30-minute interval before or after accredited education.
However, there is no 30-minute interval required if the learner will be required to leave the virtual space (to transition between accredited and nonaccredited activities) by doing something like clicking a link.
Q: Are sponsor advertisements prohibited from our accredited CE event materials?
A: Sponsor advertisements are considered marketing for ineligible companies, and these are prohibited from “educational materials that are part of accredited education,” according to Standard 5. If you want to include sponsor advertisements in select materials, make sure these are materials that don’t include educational content, such as schedules, venue maps, or logistical items.
Stay on top of common compliance Q&As with AOE’s weekly compliance tips. New tips drop every Monday.
Compliance Help: Measuring Learning Outcomes
This is the final installment of a three-part series.
Considering that improvements in competence, performance and/or patient outcomes serve as the nucleus of ACCME’s Core Accreditation Criteria, it’s imperative that providers master the planning, implementation and evaluation methods needed to achieve them.
Occasionally, we encounter providers that spend considerable time and resources on the planning and implementation phases of accredited CE, but lack a clear, well-defined evaluation method to effectively track the impact of their activities. In these cases, providers are actually producing high quality education and stimulating real changes in their learners, but the evaluation fizzle-out makes performance-in-practice and self-study reporting incredibly difficult. Often times, the reason behind poorly tracked learning outcomes is a slippery grasp on how to effectively analyze change in line with ACCME’s definitions and expectations.
Patient Outcomes
Last month we outlined ACCME’s definition of performance, which ACCME has defined as “competence in action” (you can view ACCME’s definitions of competence, performance and patient outcomes here).
Accredited providers aiming to change patient outcomes are expected to provide data that shows the impact of the provider’s educational interventions on patient care. The provider must seek to answer, “Did the patient outcome or health status improve as a result of the learner’s participation in this accredited CE activity?” At face value, this is straightforward: patient outcomes mean positive changes in the patient. Per the ACCME, these outcomes can span “various aspects such as patient health status, patient satisfaction, patient engagement, and the delivery of safe and effective care.” Examples of potential data sources include:
- Patient satisfaction surveys
- Patient lifestyle surveys
- Reduction in malpractice claims related to ____
- Reduction in emergency department visits for ____
- Reduction in mortality rates associated with ____
Here’s where patient outcomes measurement gets challenging: it can be time intensive, resource intensive, and difficult to collect data (especially data that relies on changes in patient behavior). To adequately track patient outcomes, the provider needs to:
- First determine a baseline. This entails collecting an adequate sample of patient data via chart audits to determine what the provider is aiming to change.
- Deliver the accredited education. Note that the timeline for delivery can range; is the activity a one-day seminar? A 6-month regularly scheduled series? A yearlong hands-on skills workshop?
- Provide suitable time for implementation of the accredited education into practice (both at the individual learner level, but also team or system wide). Is this something the learner, team, or healthcare system can implement in two weeks, two months, or two years? On an important note, “ACCME emphasizes that patient outcomes often result from more than just a single practitioner’s performance and can encompass broader impacts on patients, healthcare systems, and populations.” The provider needs to keep this magnitude in mind when designing the education and setting the timeframe between launch and outcomes measurement.
- Provide suitable time for implementation/improvement in patients. The learner/healthcare team might implement the education swiftly, but changes in patient health may be a gradual process. Furthermore, activities that require patient action (e.g., smoking cessation, breast self-examinations, regular STD checks) might take considerable time to take effect.
- Reassess patient charts and outcomes. This requires that the provider has continued access to the patients/their charts. For self-reported patient outcomes (like surveys), the provider is reliant on patient availability and follow-through. This can be difficult to track down if the patient has changed providers, moved, or is no longer responsive to requests to complete a survey.
There’s an argument to be made that all accredited providers are playing a long game to improve patient outcomes, and this is a worthwhile pursuit. For accredited providers aiming to change patient outcomes as part of their mission, it requires making thoughtful projections on the time and resources needed to truly execute.
If you are in need of guidance/support with measuring and reporting learning outcomes to meet accreditation board requirements, please contact the AOE team here to discuss ways we can help.
CE Community: New ACCME Resources/Toolkits & Working Groups
In case you missed it: fresh from Learn to Thrive 2026, the ACCME has released a new round of resources for providers. Browse the new working group details and toolkits below.
Resources/Toolkits
The ACCME unveiled five new resources created over the past year by the 2025 Learn to Thrive Working Groups. These resources are intended for the broader CE community’s ongoing education/enrichment. Click on respective titles below to view/download them from the ACCME website.
- Building the CPD Workforce of the Future: Defining Roles, Expectations, and Resources
- Curriculum Implementation for the Professional Development and Professional Identity Formation of the Frontline Continuing Education Educator
- Enhancing Learner Access in Accredited Continuing Medical Education: A Practical Resource Guide for CE Providers
- Joint Providership Toolkit: An Essential Guide for Fruitful Joint Providership
- RSS Coordinator Best Practices: Quick Reference Guide
New Working Groups
The 2026 Working Groups are now open and will dedicate their work to the following topics:
- A Blueprint for CE Leaders: Competency-Based Support for Early-Career Physicians
- Governing AI in Continuing Education: Model Policies for Responsible Innovation for CE/CPD Providers
- Simulation Sandbox: A Hands-On Guide to Maximize Impact and Outcomes in CE
Working groups are free and open to all interested CE professionals (no requirement to have attended Learn to Thrive 2026); sign up here by Friday, July 3.
Upcoming Events
- 2026 ACCME Accreditation Workshop
August 25 – 26, 2026, Chicago, IL
Read More >> - ABMS Conference 2026
September 16 – 18, 2026, Chicago, IL
Read More >> - ANCC Magnet & Pathway Conference 2026
October 29 – 31, 2026, Chicago, IL
Read More >> - ACPE Continuing Education (CE) Conference
November 16 – 18, 2026, Chicago, IL
Save the date (registration details TBA).
