Vivacity Consulting

Bringing energy and experience to your CME activity

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Collaborate for success

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Improve Your Medical Education Program: Collaborate with Vivacity Consulting

Collaborate with the right partners to find success for your ACCME or IMQ accreditation, re-accreditation, progress report, interim report, or CME-program improvements. Vivacity Consulting may be those partners for your program!

Providing CME credits to physicians is essential for your organization and Vivacity Consulting will help you obtain or maintain your ability to do so.  We provide expert guidance that can lead to Accreditation with Commendation.

If your organization is seeking commendation, Vivacity Consulting provides an organizational review of your the current CME program. Vivacity Consulting will work with you to develop a plan to ensure compliance throughout the whole organization.

In the instance of the The Southeast Permanente Medical Group, Vivacity Consulting designed staff training via webconference, sample templates for activity planning, consultative services during CME Committee meetings, and a team work plan for the preparation of the reaccreditation application. The physician leadership and staff embraced this process, and it led to a decision for Commendation by the state accreditation organization.

To learn more about Vivacity Consulting, click here.

Guide the CME Program

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Vivacity Consulting: Your Medical Education Guide

Medical education is no longer about talking heads in a conference room. It must produce measurable results and it is best when it impacts the actual practice of the attendee in a long-term fashion.

Vivacity Consulting’s experts can review your current program, audit your previous activities and make recommendations for enhancing or expanding your CME program. Your programs will be more attractive to your attendees if they provide documented improvement in health care, address ways to overcome barriers, or help to meet certification needs, such as MOC (maintenance of certification).

Vivacity Consulting has partnered with numerous organizations in the design and implementation of impactful activities. Working with SAGES, Ms. Schwarz has facilitated two longitudinal Performance Improvement educational activities designed to increase the adoption of complicated hernia surgery procedures into practice.

Ms. Schwarz has also led 20 successful initial and reaccreditation applications for the ACCME and the IMQ, with 6 resulting in decisions of accreditation with commendation.

Major Revision Necessary for ACCME Commendation Critiera

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The ACCME Must Revise the Proposed New Commendation Criteria

My initial response to the proposed new commendation criteria, released January 12, 2016, was positive. I like the menu idea, and the criteria seemed in line with everything we have been discussing in the medical education world in the last 2-4 years (or longer!)

I work with reaccreditation applications and medical education programs every day. And the more I dug into the details, the more convinced I became that the ACCME is asking the impossible, at least for many of my clients.

Take Criterion 29 for example. The new criteria states, “Develops technical and procedural skills of learners.” This should be a slam-dunk for my client, SAGES. SAGES offers hands-on labs at every annual meeting, as well several enduring materials that are designed to improve (and measure) technical skills. However, when I noticed that the standard for compliance has been proposed to be > or = 10% of learners and/or activities, I did some math.

Annual Meeting attendance = 2,400
Hands On lab attendance = 92
Percentage of learners = 3.8%

So SAGES would not be in compliance with the new standard based on percentage of learners, even though SAGES invests tremendous resources and staff time into these labs. Why does SAGES offer these labs? We have determined they benefit our learners based on self-reported performance change data. In order to meet compliance, SAGES would have to hold bigger labs which would either require lower faculty:student ratios or a huge amount of resources that probably could not be procured.

What if we counted activities?

Total number of activities offered in 2014 = 111
Total number of activities that meet the critical elements of objective assessment of technical skill = 4
Percentage of activities = 3%

In order to meet compliance, SAGES would have to eliminate a large number of video education in order to bring our percentage up to 10%. This would be the only option, as the 4 activities that do meet the critical elements have cost the society millions of dollars combined.

For this reason, I urge you to comment on the proposed criteria and to demand the ACCME re-engage stakeholders from all different provider types to determine appropriate standards for compliance for these criteria.

http://www.accme.org/

The call for comment ends Feb 16, 2016.

Vivacity Consulting Invited to Present at 2016 ACEhp Conference

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Vivacity Consulting will Present during the Alliance for CE in the Health Professions 2016 Conference

Ms. Schwarz will lead two sessions at the ACEhp Conference, to be held Jan 13 – 16, 2016 at the Gaylord National, National Harbor, Maryland (near Washington DC).

Shades of Gray: Drawing the Line on Employees of Commercial Interests

Thursday, January 14, 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM

Primary Presenter:

Erin Schwarz, CEO/Principal Consultant, Vivacity Consulting, LLC, Foothill Ranch, California

Co-Presenter(s):

Jacqueline Steltz-Lenarsky, MA, Manager, Continuing Medical Education, Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, Burbank, California

Anne Grupe, MSEd, Director, CME, American Society of Clinical Oncology, Alexandria, Virginia

Session Description
As the healthcare landscape gets more complex, many organizations are finding that they must to react to situations instead of being prepared proactively. This applies particularly to the issues relating to the use of employees of commercial interests.

During this session, we will outline four elements that must be involved when considering

  • What do the rules say (and not say)?
  • What are your audience needs?
  • How do you make a decision as interpreter of these rules? What is your policy?
  • How do you reassess your policy so it is a living document?

Throughout the presentation we will give examples from our own experiences. Attendees will gain new ideas and strategies that they might implement into their own practice as they guide their own programs to compliant, impactful education.

 

My Crummy Story: How I Got Out of a Bad Situation and How You Can Too

Friday, January 15, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Primary Presenter:

Erin Schwarz, CEO/Principal Consultant, Vivacity Consulting, LLC, Foothill Ranch, California

Co-Presenter(s):

Philip A. Dombrowski, MBA, FACEHP, President, PD Associates, Bomoseen, Vermont

Art Arellano, Professional Education Manager, American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists (AAGL)

Session Description
Have you every found yourself in a crummy situation and wished you had a fairy godmother that could get you out of it? The ACEhp can be the source of multiple fairy godmothers (and godfathers). In this session, three experienced CE professionals will present on some difficult cases they have faced relating to compliance, leadership and faculty, and how they were able to resolve the situation in part due to advice from their network and mentors. Audience members will share their own crummy stories and successes with each other in round tables, with the expectation that they can serve as resources for each other and help each other find solutions to pressing problems. At the conclusion of this activity, we expect that attendees will leave with an expanded contact list of other CE professionals to whom they can turn when faced with challenging or concerning situations in the future.

Interactive CME proven more effective

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Accreditation with Commendation – How We Did It

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Accreditation with Commendation Decisions for 3 Clients – How We Did It

Three of Vivacity Consulting clients recently received Accreditation with Commendation from the ACCME and from MAG (the ACCME state-accreditor for Georgia). Although the clients are substantially different – one is a large specialty society, one is a medium specialty society, and one is a large Children’s hospital – the strategy that we followed was similar for all three.

1. Focus on the Required Areas of Compliance First

You cannot receive Commendation unless you achieve compliance with Criteria 1-13 and the ACCME’s policies. Most importantly these days, this includes the Standards for Commercial Support. (NOTE: If you have not already improved your COI system, do so now! It should be as close to perfect as possible for your most recent activities at the minimum.)

2. Discuss Commendation Criteria Everywhere

In all three instances, we translated the criteria into plain English and then showed them around the organization. In one case, we held formal conference calls with other Department heads to discuss ways in which the society might be meeting these expectations. In another, we talked about it informally with staff and Committee members. In both instances, the Education Departments learned about endeavors that could be useful both to the Commendation criteria but also as it related to the mission of the Department. The ACCME encourages collaboration with other organizations but it turns out, obtaining commendation can happen when you improve collaboration internally.

3. Look at the Compendium

This is a no-brainer, but really study the ACCME’s examples published here. In some instances, it might spark an idea that you didn’t already have. (It is also a great idea to review these examples regularly for the mandatory criteria as well.) Reviewing these examples leads to my next point …

4. Plan Early for Commendation

It’s never too early to plan for Commendation! If you notice that your organization does something that meets an element of compliance, add it to your ACCME Reaccreditation file.

But more importantly, assess areas in which your organization might be missing the mark and determine ways that you could potentially bolster your program. It’s amazing, but the ACCME developed the Commendation criteria for a reason. It turns out that, for example, implementing non-educational strategies to foster change after an educational activity (such as sending reminder emails or Tweets about the changes that were suggested) really does make your program better and your learners more likely to make that change.

Which, in the end, is the whole point of all of this!

[The ACCME is expected to release updated Commendation Criteria in 2015. Vivacity will update this blog post, if necessary, once they do so.]