Non-CME Strategies for CME Success

Today we’re going to talk about Non-CME strategies for CME success. For those of you who are accredited providers, you may remember this as ACCME criterion 17, or what is called non-education strategies. We call them non-CME strategies because many times these strategies actually involve educational activities, although they just aren’t certified for CME. Non-CME strategies are great for extending the CME message, or even driving deeper into the physicians’ practice. What we’d like to do today is share with you three examples of non-education strategies that might benefit your knowledge of CME or your actual CME program.

Resource Center

A resource center is a place, usually on the web, where physicians and patients can go to find information on standards, FAQ’s, and other issues that demonstrate best practices. These types of resource centers are great where therapeutic standards or therapies are emerging, or where hands-on practices require improvement.

Patient reminders or “Did You Know” sheets

A patient reminder, or “Did You Know” sheet, is simply a sheet (paper or electronic) and usually includes a link to a patient advocacy organization within the sheet. These are great for disease or treatment areas where early diagnosis or patient adherence/compliance is a critical issue.

Patient Surveys

Global has worked closely with one of our partners, Clinical and Patient Educators Association, to do quite a few different patient surveys in several different therapeutic areas. These surveys are incredibly useful because they empower the patient to drive future education. For example, for one patient survey we did, we asked patients with MS how many times their medication had been changed. 21% stated that it had been changed more than 4 times since initial diagnosis. As another example in the area of diabetes, we found out that only about half of the diabetes patients we surveyed stated that they were taking their medication directly as prescribed. As well, most of these respondents stated they were not communicating this information with their physician or specialist, which is obviously a problem. Wherever a problem in healthcare exists, there is an opportunity for CME to bridge the gap, address the problem and in some ways, solve that problem. CME truly does provide a key opportunity for improvement in the healthcare field. As always, if you have any questions about CME topics, including Non-CME strategies, feel free to contact us For Global, I'm Stephen Lewis. Have a great day.