Did you know that the Council on Podiatric Medical Education reviewed and adopted changes to CPME document 720?
These changes were adopted by the CPME at the October 2019 meeting and take effect July 1, 2020. Standards 1, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, as well as the Glossary and Appendix A & B (so, about 2/3 of the entire document) all have changes continuing education providers should be prepared for.
I’ve reviewed the changes extensively and here are the takeaways:
Standard 1.0
A few verbiage changes to the mission statement requirements (nothing major) in Standard 1.1.
Specifics on how many people should be on the Education Committee: “The committee shall include at least 3 people and at least one podiatric physician”. I read this as “at least 3 people with at least one of them being a DPM”.
Standard 5.0
Super helpful – a list of items the Financial Disclosure must include (Standard 5.2):
A bit of “fine print” in Standard 5.3 about reviewing all disclosure forms before the activity.
Standard 6.0
6.1 has a few verbiage modifications for clarification but nothing drastic.
6.2 has a major change – “The provider has the discretion to use commercial support to pay for travel, lodging, honoraria, or personal expenses for bona fide employees and volunteers for the provider, joint provider, or educational partner. A provider shall not award CECH for individual lectures or workshops listed or designated in the program agenda as supported by commercial interests.” This one has 2 parts:
- Now, funds from commercial support (sponsors, etc) can be used to offset travel costs, etc as long as the person is an employee or volunteer of the organization (so, not just a regular attendee).
- If you want to offer CECH for a lecture or workshop, be sure it isn’t being supported by any commercial interest.
Standard 6.3 has some minor tweaks to clarify that no trade names, product messages, logo or product image may be included in educational material (including slide presentations). As a reminder, if you absolutely must mention a specific product name, you must include a list of alternative products. Also, be sure any advertisements or sponsor messages are at the beginning or end of your printed on-site program, NOT in the middle of the agenda.
Standard 7.0
Honestly, just a bit of wording changes for clarification. This standard is about the administrative process for determining number of hours available, method of attendance, etc.
One important thing that they kind of snuck in here which I think will have an impact on the planning process: “The following information must be published in the final activity publication and/or registration brochure” (7.1). I interpret “registration brochure” as the document that is published well in advance of the actual education activity to help market the seminar. If that is indeed what CPME means by “registration brochure”, then meeting planners will have to prepare the detailed hourly agenda, including topics and faculty, commercial support (sponsors), and more way in advance. I’ve reached out to CPME for clarification on this. (Be sure to subscribe to my email newsletter below to receive the update)
Standard 8.0
Nothing major here; just a few little changes to the order of requirements in 8.1 & 8.2.
Standard 9.0
This standard refers to web-based activities including webinars. No impactful changes here but be sure to familiarize yourself with this section because webinars are becoming increasingly popular as a convenient way of earning CECH.
Glossary
Did you even know there was a glossary? There is, and it is very helpful. They’ve added a few terms throughout including: article, compliance, probation, progress report (my personal fave!), and more. It’s worth the time to read through the glossary.
Appendix A
Appendix A refers to the content included in an educational activity. They added to the list of approved content: MIPS and CPT coding. Fun fact: practice management topics are approved as long as the provider can demonstrate the content will enhance patient care.
Appendix B
Appendix B talks about the process used to calculate CECH avaiable. They added a paragraph about published articles counting for up to 5 CECH per article, if it’s published in the MEDLINE database.
It’s time to outsource.
Through working with various organizations, I have become an expert in CPME Standards. I have developed compliant templates, checklists, standard operating procedures and more to help my clients manage this process.
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