Working Groups

We are pleased to once again offer Working Groups as an option for the ACCME annual meeting.

What are Working Groups?
Working Groups are an optional, longitudinal learning opportunity designed to facilitate the collaboration of CE professionals in the production of a resource for the CE community. You can add participation in a Working Group to your meeting registration for an additional $100 registration fee.

Who can participate in a Working Group?
Both in-person and virtual registrants can register to participate in a Working Group.

When will Working Groups meet?
Whether you've registered to attend the ACCME 2022 Meeting in person or virtually, the Working Groups will meet via web-conference in the weeks leading up to the ACCME 2022 Meeting beginning in mid-March (exact dates & times TBD). The final Working Group meeting will take place as a hybrid meeting - meaning that in-person registrants will meet in person and virtual registrants will connect via web-conference - on Monday, April 25 (the ACCME 2022 Meeting Pre-Conference Day).

What will happen with the resources that the Working Groups create?
Following the ACCME 2022 Meeting, we will disseminate the resources developed by the Working Groups with attribution to the Working Group members.

What are the ACCME 2022 Working Group options?
We have six Working Groups for you to choose from in 2022. When you register and choose a ticket that includes the Working Group option, you will be prompted to select one of the following groups:

❶	Best of Both Worlds - Combining the Benefits of Live & Virtual for Next Gen Hybrid Activities
	As we come out of this pandemic and "return to live" events, the idea of a "new normal" is becoming more realistic. There are some aspects of in-person events that cannot be mirrored online, yet there are many benefits of hosting and attending meetings virtually. This working group will leverage collective experience and expertise to create a playbook and framework for implementing Next Generation Hybrid Meetings - that will combine the unique benefits of both in-person and virtual learning. The goal of this Working Group is to create a brief Playbook that highlights the unique benefits of each type of format - such as in-person and virtual, and creates a toolkit and framework that can be used by the community as we bring Hybrid Meetings into the future as the "New Normal." It will cover planning, educational design, and outcomes measurement.

❷	Credit Systems: Resource Kit for Navigating Multiple CE Professions
	Joint Accreditation (JA) providers along with providers accredited by multiple professions have the ability to certify CE activities and profession-specific credit. Offering a variety of credit for CE activities requires a basic understanding of the distinct considerations for each profession. Even when a provider has years of CE experience, most do not have deep familiarity with the nuances that exist with each profession. As a result, any providers offering multiple credit for CE activities must conduct research, collect resources, and develop training for their staff. JA providers and providers that award credit to multiple professions would be best served if a single compendium document existed that can be utilized in training staff on the various credit systems that exist. The output from this Working Group would be a resource kit to be disseminated widely and hopefully be a valuable and time-saving tool for all CE professional/providers that are engaged in team-based/interprofessional accredited continuing education implementing a new profession or a refresher for their current professions. This resource kit would outline the basics of each of the 10 credit system in the Joint Accreditation collaborative and include key information necessary to implement that credit. Our goal for this Working Group is to bring together veteran and new JA providers along with other accredited organizations that offer multiple credit types to build this resource kit, in order to identify and organize frequently asked questions and pertinent information that needs to be included.

❸	Making Evaluations of Value
	Although the ACCME does not require activity evaluations, much time is frequently taken up by planners and learners in designing and completing lengthy post-activity evaluations which may not always provide useful data that support the expectations of ACCME's Analyzes Changes requirement (formerly Criterion 11). We wish to address the approaches that CME providers use to measure changes in learners (competence, performance, or patient outcomes). This may also include community health outcomes or systems changes. How can CME providers assess changes or make evaluations that are meaningful, short, and useful that meet expectations for ACCME and medical specialty board certification (e.g. Continuing Certification, MOC)? We will produce a document of various ways to improve evaluations and provide alternatives for analyzing or assessing changes in learners as to knowledge, abilities, practice, and/or patient outcomes, and the collection of appropriate information for ACCME and MOC.

❹	Learning Health Systems: Streamlining CE to Capture Performance-Based Education with the help of QI, IT, and the EMR
	CE is an invaluable key to change in every healthcare system, and yet is often overlooked because of previously held beliefs about it being "too slow" or that it must go through a rigorous process to be useful or effective. Learning in healthcare happens at a rapid pace, as was evidenced by COVID, and yet much of that learning is done in silos. The goal of learning health systems is to develop an effective integration of multiple areas - quality, evidence-based practice, information systems, patients, providers and CE - to create a rapid response to clinical issues, emerging evidence and performance improvement in the pursuit of better patient outcomes. The goal of this Working Group would be the creation of guidelines that could be used by a hospital/healthcare system to work with QI to identify gaps, develop just-in-time education at the point of care to address the gap, and leverage IT and EMR colleagues to build any relevant practice changes into the EMR. These guidelines could subsequently be used by the CE professionals to determine how to award and track credit for the learner, while gaining evaluative feedback to meet CE accreditation requirements.

❺	Addressing FDA REMS: A Special Challenge, A Special Opportunity
	The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) included accredited Continuing Education (CE) as one of the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) requirements for the manufacturers of opioid analgesics beginning in 2013. The CE must be funded by independent grants from the REMS Program Companies (RPC) and be based on an FDA curricular Blueprint. Building CE activities based on the Blueprint that also address the educational needs of clinician learners presents specific challenges to CE Providers and learners such as 1) the substantial investment of learners’ time needed to complete the content, 2) the “greater-than-usual number of registration questions” required by the FDA, 3) the prescriptive nature of REMS-compliant accredited CE, 4) the lack of opportunity for knowledgeable clinicians to demonstrate evidence of prior learning/competence. The inclusion of accredited CE by the FDA in REMS presents a special opportunity for the CE provider to help address safety concerns about specific therapeutic treatments employing evidence-based, non-biased education within the context of clinical practice. The goal of this group will be to explore together the ways that CE can be part of the solution ensuring safe use of drugs and reducing patient harm. We will examine the barriers as well as the strategies that have been successful during the past nine years of the opioid analgesic REMS program. The output of this working group will be 1) a summary of key learnings for newcomers and veterans, 2) recommendations for how to measure outcomes of REMS CE that would be meaningful to the FDA and to the public, 4) ideas for how to promote your REMS based activity, 4) a list of publications and consideration of where to house a repository, 5) other goals as may be determined by the group.

❻	Getting Started (or Growing) Your CME for MOC Program
	ACCME has collaborated with American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) certifying boards to simplify and align the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) process to better meet the needs of physicians and educators. With a few simple modifications, any accredited provider can offer MOC credit/points right now for educational activities they are already offering. However, the realities of implementing an MOC program can present some logistical challenges for both large and small providers. This Working Group will bring together CME providers who have interest in offering CME for MOC to share challenges and solutions to inform best-practice approaches that can benefit the entire community of accredited CME. The intended output for the Working Group will be a compendium of provider examples that accredited CME professionals can use to support their successful implementation of CME for MOC at their organizations. These resources may include helpful strategies for evaluating CME for MOC activities (e.g. reflective questions, feedback to learners) and examples of approaches that do and do not meet board/ACCME expectations. We also recognize that CME professionals may benefit from materials that help them to “sell” the value of these approaches to CME planners and faculty. We would hope that developing a resource of these “pearls” from providers who are already doing MOC could be a useful resource for CME providers who are reluctant or encountering resistance to offering CME for MOC in their educational programs.