AOE Compliance Connection – September 2020 Newsletter

Welcome to the September 2020 edition of AOE Compliance Connection, AOE’s monthly newsletter. This month, we are sharing our latest publication: AOE’s Anti-Racism Stance and Actions as a public display of our commitment to navigate the CE enterprise with integrity and purpose. We’ll also keep you updated as we spotlight the ACCME and their many recent updates, including information about contacts in PARS, the current COVID-19 Planning Form, and the various ways the pandemic is affecting CE providers like you. It is our pleasure to support you and your team through tools like this monthly newsletter, weekly compliance tips on Twitter and Facebook, and other regular correspondence!

PARS Contacts

The ACCME issued a recent reminder to providers to maintain up to date contacts in the Program and Activity Reporting System (PARS). Your responsibility is to designate one person as the primary point of contact who is prepared to receive official ACCME communication of any type. This individual should be able to receive emails from ACCME addresses (including info@accme.org and announcements@accme.org) and should make internal arrangements to ensure that these addresses are not blocked or designated as spam.

Providers are encouraged to select a Medical Director as a secondary contact, and are able to select other contacts, as well. More information about PARS contact can be found here.

COVID-19 Planning Form

The ACCME released Planning Form for Expedited Accredited Activities Related to COVID-19 this past spring in order to help accredited CE providers meet the urgent need for pandemic-related education.

Since its release, the form has been widely utilized among a broad array of providers. As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, the need for an updated form may present itself soon. As such, the current form is available for use only for activities offered by December 31, 2020.

Pandemic Provider Effects

In an ongoing effort to support the CE community as it responds to the pandemic, the ACCME recently conducted several interviews as well as a survey of accredited providers.

As expected, many providers reported current and future challenges, but a handful of other providers responded with optimism, even projecting increases in numbers of activities and learners for 2021. Nearly all providers reported a shift from live to virtual formats for activities, which many providers have accepted as a possibly permanent transition.

A few of the collective opportunities that were identified by survey respondents are:

• • Demonstrating the value of CE in response to the pandemic – this is the ideal time.
  • Identifying opportunities for innovation, including activity format, involvement of community, technology tools, and IPCE teams.
  • Addressing new learning needs, such as telehealth care. Consider online learning management systems (LMS).

• Engaging expert faculty who can participate more easily from remote locations.

Conversely, here are a few of the collective challenges identified by survey respondents:

• Training the CE team on new educational strategies and formats that tend to be more time-consuming.
• Dealing with faculty members that are less available and possibly resistant to new learning models.
• Determining viable pricing models for virtual events and gathering less-consistent commercial support.
• Hosting virtual exhibit halls and satellite events while meeting ACCME and industry requirements.
• Shipping training materials to learners so they can practice skills at home.
• Recording attendance and ensuring feedback from online activities.

The ACCME’s full article can be viewed here.

Updates to Standards

The ACCME has been in the process of revising, clarifying, and modernizing the Standards for Integrity and Independence of Accredited Continuing Education with the goal of ensuring “their continued relevance and effectiveness in the changing healthcare environment”.

After a community-wide call for comments this past spring, the ACCME Board of Directors reviewed the responses at its March 2020 meeting and came to an agreement about modifications to make in response to the community’s comments. As it continues to work towards harmonization with various members of the CE community, the Board decided to delay adoption and implementation of the revised Standards while the discussions about alignment are taking place.

As of now, the expectation is that those harmonization conversations will conclude this fall, and we expect to see the release of a final version of the Standards before the end of 2020.

Racism is a fatal disease, and as an American small business we are taking more action to help eradicate it.

AOE’s official Anti-Racism Stance outlines the dangers of staying silent in the face of racism and the importance of acknowledging our professional responsibility to conduct our business in an overtly anti-racist manner.

AOE has published our stance and areas of committed actions on our website in an effort to publicly display our commitment to change and growth.

Our commitment extends past a simple anti-racist statement. We are taking action steps to actively support Black Americans in the fight against racism, support Black-owned businesses in their growth, and support the hiring and growth of Black employees at our business. Our full list of action steps can be viewed here.

We are a small company. But every day, we achieve successes with our clients, staff members, and colleagues in the field of accredited medical education. By taking the steps above, learning and growing through these actions, we are confident we can achieve success in the American fight against racism.