AOE Compliance Connection

Welcome to the May 2026 edition of AOE’s Monthly Newsletter. This edition of AOE Compliance Connection includes an ACCME gift card policy update, the second installment of our three-part series on learning outcomes, and a brief recap of our time at Learn to Thrive 2026.

Are you following our weekly compliance tips? If not, make them a part of your accredited CE compliance routine! New tips drop every Monday.

Following a Call for Comment in December 2025, the ACCME has formalized a policy tied to gift cards and remuneration. The Prohibition of Gift Cards or Personal Remuneration Associated with the Purchase of Accredited CME rule states:

“An accredited provider, or any of its agents, may not offer, provide, or facilitate a gift card, cash equivalent, or other form of personal remuneration to any individual learner or group of learners as part of, or in association with, the purchase or registration for an accredited continuing medical education (CME) activity. This prohibition applies regardless of the source of payment for the CME activity, including self-payment and circumstances in which an employer, institution, or other entity pays for or reimburses the costs associated with participation.”

In simple terms, accredited providers cannot use gift cards, cash equivalents, or other forms of personal remuneration as incentives for learners to purchase or register for accredited CE activities

This does not apply to accredited provider use of discounts, credits or price adjustments to registration fees; those measures are considered separate. Additionally, accredited providers are not prohibited from all uses of gift cards across the board (e.g., as an incentive to complete a survey, for instance).

With that said, now is a great time to review your organization’s current policies for specifics on incentives, and any use of gift cards, cash equivalents or personal remuneration related to accredited CE activities, to ensure it complies with ACCME’s policy. You can read more about the policy/added contextual details from ACCME here.

This is the second 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 planning, implementation and evaluation methods 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.

Performance

Last month we outlined ACCME’s definition of competence, which is essentially “ability that has not yet been put into practice.” Performance, however, is defined as “competence in action.”

Accredited providers aiming to change learner performance are expected to provide data that shows learners have made actual changes in their practice, and these connect directly to the learning objectives of the accredited CE activity. In other words, the provider must demonstrate that learners have made changes to their practice as a result of their participation in the education.

Depending on the size of your program and organization (e.g. number of activities, number of learners, and resources at your discretion), this might be a straightforward task or a seem like a labor-intensive endeavor. Here’s the good news: the parameters on the data are somewhat flexible. First, both practice level data and learner reported changes in practice are acceptable. Assuming you’ve allotted a suitable window for learners to implement their newly acquired skills into their practice (typically a 60 to 90-day window, minimum), you can use their self-reported updates.

Additionally, the format and implementation for gathering your data can vary. As long as the mechanism is appropriate to the specific activity and educational content, and directly addresses what you’ve designed to change, you have some freedom with design. In no particular order, an accredited provider might utilize one of the following mechanisms to track performance changes:

• Chart audits and review of electronic health records to track changes in learner behavior (e.g., prescribing datasets, fewer coding errors, improved communication with patients)
• A follow-up learner survey with both predetermined answer selections and free response fields
• Individual progress logged via journal entries in an LMS
• Video interviews with learners six months after the activity
• In-person simulation exercises, where the provider observes changes in learner behavior/how they engage with a standardized patient

Up next month: measuring changes in patient outcomes.

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.

ACCME’s Learn to Thrive conference always poses a great opportunity to immerse ourselves in policy updates, hearty discussion, and quality connection with our CME/CE peers, and the 2026 event was no exception. AI remained a major focus area, particularly around responsible implementation, workflow optimization, prompt development, and maintaining human oversight within accredited CE processes.

ACCME continues to underscore the importance of achieving careful cohesion between AI use and Standard 1. One session focused heavily on content validity, emphasizing that accredited CE is built on trust that education is evidence-based, scientifically sound, balanced, and free from commercial bias. The session reinforced that while AI can support efficiency and operational workflows, scientific and accreditation judgment still require meaningful human oversight.

With appropriate privacy and other safeguards in place, AOE has assisted accredited medical associations, hospitals, and medical schools implement AI tools addressing workflow, disclosure and mitigation, and management of RSS tasks. While human oversight/management is required, the time needed to complete some tasks reduced from 20-50 percent.

The deadline to submit abstracts for the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Processions (ACEHP) Alliance 2027 Annual Conference is Monday, June 15. The 2027 conference theme is United in Purpose: Generation Voices, Shared Visions, “highlighting the power of collaboration and the value of diverse perspectives.” Applicants can submit abstracts for 60-minute sessions or 90-minute workshops, with an emphasis on practical uses, interactive components, and clearly defined takeaways (i.e., learning objectives and deliverables). Visit the Alliance website here for full details.

• 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).