Wednesday, June 13, 2012
This Week's News
Participate in CME activities at your convenience through the AMA's online offerings
Physicians discuss delivery reform at White House town-hall meeting
AMA Annual Meeting begins this week; view proposed policies online
Medicare-private payer partnership to fund primary care innovation
Special Feature
Participate in CME activities at your convenience through the AMA's online offerings
Physician demand for online continuing medical education (CME) training is high, with 84.1 percent of doctors saying in a recent survey that they would prefer attending CME events virtually. Only 6.4 percent of those surveyed, however, said they actually participate in virtual training.
That's a significant gap—and the AMA is well positioned to bridge it by providing a variety of online CME courses. AMA-sponsored activities offer AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ and are searchable by topic or format, making it easy for physicians to meet their professional learning needs at their convenience.
Among the many offerings is a series of three tutorials that outline best practices for using health information technology. Developed by the AMA and TransforMED, a nonprofit subsidiary of the American Academy of Family Physicians, these short educational videos cover ePrescribing, pre-visit planning and point-of-care documentation.
The AMA also offers several activities that focus on improving health outcomes through prevention and wellness. The newest is a Performance Improvement CME activity that shows physicians how to calculate and document patients' body mass index as a routine part of office visits. The activity consists of three stages—A, B and C—and is designed to be an important component of a physician's efforts to treat and prevent obesity.
"Promoting Healthy Families" helps physicians talk about healthy behaviors with their adult patients in a way that may lead to positive changes for the whole family. And the "Physician's Guide to Personal Health" activity, part of the AMA Healthier Life Steps® program, aims to help physicians focus on their own health.
Physicians also can take advantage of hundreds of CME activities available through The JAMA Network. Activities are searchable by topic or alongside the related journal article. A doctor's user account tracks CME activities in which he or she has participated and generates certificates for instant accreditation of completed activities. The user account also allows physicians to manage their subscriptions, orders and alerts and to save important figures and tables.
The survey about the demand for and participation in CME events was released in April by ON24, a San Francisco-based communication technology vendor, and MedData Group, an interactive content and database marketing services company in Topsfield, Mass. View an American Medical News story about the survey.
