CME course blends learning with improving quality of care

The new online program also meets requirements for family physicians' maintenance of certification.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. Feb. 14, 2005.

The trend of linking continuing medical education to performance improvement is gaining momentum. The American Academy of Family Physicians has launched a new online program called Measuring, Evaluating and Translating Research Into Care that's geared to help physicians improve patient care and meet maintenance-of-certification requirements.

Dale Moquist, MD, a Houston family physician and AAFP delegate, helped test the program. He was impressed with how easy it was to use.

"I see this program as a great opportunity for family physicians to not only measure the quality of work they're doing but to compare themselves to their peers," Dr. Moquist said.

Developed by the American Academy of Family Physicians, the METRIC program consists of a series of quality improvement modules, focusing primarily on single disease conditions. The first two are being released in 2005.

Bruce Bagley, MD, medical director of quality improvement for the AAFP, said the online program is intended as a tool to raise quality of care in the office while teaching about a particular disease.

"We're allowing credit for practice improvement work in the office," he said. "We know that seat time [in a lecture hall] doesn't cause behavior change. We're trying to do CME that engages physicians and causes them to produce a product."

That product is better health care and ultimately, healthier patients, Dr. Bagley said.

Dr. Moquist agreed. "You are doing something good for your patients, and at the same time you're getting CME credit," he said. "If you go and listen to a talk on the treatment of hypertension, you want to take that back to your patients and use it. This is the same thing, but it's a different way of doing it."