Overall Mission

Vision

The vision of the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine Irwin H. Brown Office of Continuing Medical Education is to lead in a delivery system of teaching physicians and other health professionals the current standards of care in basic and advanced medical care as well as the latest and coming advances in medical knowledge to improve the quality of patient management, not only within the University system but throughout Oklahoma and the United States.

Goals

The goals of the Office of CME are to improve patient outcomes by providing the as follows:

• To provide educational activities targeted to specific physician audiences in Oklahoma and the United States in order to keep their knowledge and skills at the highest possible levels, based on physician needs
• To present new research knowledge and its application to health care and disease prevention to health care professionals
• To partner with other organizations and institutions, under the clinical and scientific guidance of the OU College of Medicine faculty, in offering educational activities to regional, national and international medical communities
• To develop and evaluate new educational methods employing emerging technologies that will bring cutting-edge knowledge and skills to physicians worldwide with more speed and better interactive learning techniques
• To meet or exceed the expectations of the Essential Areas and Policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and the guidelines of the American Medical Association's Physician Recognition Award (AMA/PRA)

Content

The content of the varied activities sponsored by the Irwin H. Brown Office of CME includes primary care, specialty, and subspecialty topics in the field of medicine. The scope of activities involves the body of knowledge and skills generally recognized and accepted by the medical profession within the basic medical sciences and the discipline of clinical medicine. The content is determined through the use of needs assessments, surveys, participant evaluations, quality assurance data, and current literature.

Target Audience

The target audience of the Irwin H. Brown Office of CME includes OU Medical Center and OU-Tulsa physicians, all Oklahoma physicians, and other physicians and health care professionals locally, nationally and globally.

Activities

The Irwin H. Brown Office of CME sponsors conferences, seminars and workshops, regularly scheduled programs, teleconferences, home study courses, and enduring materials, which include print, video, audio and Internet CME.

Expected Results

As a result of these educational activities, the Irwin H. Brown Office of CME fosters the continuing professional development of physicians. The offerings are intended to enhance physician and other health care professionals' training to affect their knowledge with the immediate goal of satisfying the learners' needs and the ultimate goal of improving patient care.

Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME)

The University of Oklahoma College of Medicine is accredited by the ACCME to sponsor continuing medical education for physicians. The CME Office is located in the Rogers Building, Room 202, phone (405) 271-2350.

2007-2008 Objectives

  In addition to handling the regular CME activities, the CME Office has plans to:

• Begin the process of implementing change over the next four years to meeting the ACCME newly Updated Accredition Criteria.  The process will include: a) review all the current processes and forms for compliance with the criteria.  b) As each OU/CME accreditation application is received, take the special time to educate the course director and course contact on the Updated Accredition Criteria.  Ask questions that will investigate methods to add criteria #16-22 which are steps towards the Accreditation with Commendation (Level 3).  Develop an OU/CME question sheet to assist with the investigation.

• Assure ongoing ACCME compliance for all accredited activities, accomplishing all the ACCME Essentials, Guidelines and the Standards for Commercial Support by following our policies and documenting everything in our activity files. 

• Manage the accreditation approval process for all activity applications by reviewing the brochures, the objectives, the speaker(s) CV’s, Bio’s and disclosure form(s),  their individual budgets, their agendas, the past evaluations, the past financial reports (debit or credit balance), and check for past CME violations of the ACCME Essentials, Guidelines or Standards of Commercial Support.

• Upon approval of the applications, write approval letters, enter the activity in the database system, and in some cases, receive the participant registrations and provide sign-in sheets, nametags, and other requested reports.

• Oversee and manage the commercial support for many of the traditional, regularly schedule activities, and enduring materials activities by ensuring the following process and procedures are followed: 1) reviewing all letter of agreements, 2) sending the letters to OU legal for review, 3) transferring legal’s required changes to the original letters, 4) submitting the letters to the companies, 5) securing the fully executed letters back from the companies, 6) tracking expenditures of the commercial funds, 7) paying the speakers travel and honoraria associated to the commercial support funds, 8) returning unused funds and providing budget accounting of the expenditures to the companies.

• Achieve conflict resolution on each speaker’s and planner’s completed disclosure, and assure and arrange for participants to be informed/receive written results of the disclosures.

• Continue to update and maintain the annual disclosure database with the current yearly disclosures from our OU Faculty members.

• Finalize all activities by recording participant names, addresses and credit units, returning activity balances or by collecting activity deficits after recording our CME administrative and participant fees then preparing over a hundred closure letters.  Closure of balances and deficits requires a process of creating invoices, transfers, or requisition requests, equaling over a hundred processes. Review the same number of evaluation summaries for suggestions, possible irregularities, and comments on future activities.

• Plan, implement and evaluate the 11th Annual Primary Care Update 2008 activity. Develop a planning strategy to capitalize on the event by soliciting for commercial funds for the live activity and separately for our enduring materials project development with separate grant applications.  Plan for exhibit space and collect exhibits fees using traditional and non-traditional vendors.

• Capture most of the presentations at the 2008 Primary Care Update as allowed by the presenters and according to the value of the topic to a broad audience.

• Review and select a minimum of 10 of these captured presentations for development into web-based, accredited enduring materials.

• Continue to implement, and educate our clients on, the new educational formats and the revised accreditation statement.

• Attend national meetings for the latest strategies and trends if the budget allows for such travels.

• Continue the partnership with the OU Department of Pediatrics to capture their grand rounds for Internet CME and market.

• Create a minimum of 10 web-based enduring materials from the captured Pediatrics grand rounds

• Solicit commercial funds to produce an additional live or enduring materials project.

• Conduct two informational meetings with course directors/contacts of Regularly Scheduled Series in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

• Continue to upgrade office computers, MeetingTrak and related software.

• Continually monitor the CETrak software hosting our online web-based CME activities.

• Maintain a paper and electronic file storage system for 2007-2008.

• Develop written policies including quality assurance measures for utilizing imaging-technology to achieve the goal of a paperless archive system if time permits.

• Conduct on-site audits of selected accredited live activities to assure quality and ACCME compliance as decided by the director.

• Conduct audits of all accredited Regularly Scheduled Series to assure quality and ACCME compliance as decided by the director.

• Develop an on-line application process for activity accreditation, if time permits.

• Seek technical assistance to continue to revise and improve the CME web site as needed.

• Continue to market the CME Office services including on-line enduring materials, traditional joint sponsorships, and our Credit Keeper memberships, using multiple marketing strategies including website optimization, email marketing, direct mail and journal advertising.  Investigate methods to improve retrieval of our offerings by web search engines like Google and Yahoo.

• Continue to provide staff development and training in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, html-hyper text markup language, and Adobe Acrobat Professional software to optimize and enhance the effectiveness of each employee in his or her job responsibilities.

• Director, Associate Director and Administrative Coordinator will provide consultation to the Oklahoma State Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision.

• Support the annual Oklahoma Alliance for CME with leadership, CME credit, and complete meeting planning services as requested.

• Assistant Dean for CME and Director will serve as site surveyor for the Oklahoma State Medical Association.

• Director will serve on ACME’s ‘State and Regional Organization (SRO) Committee’.

• Recruit commercial support for our interoffice online CME or live activities projects.

• Collaborate with the OU Quality Work Groups to determine the educational needs of OU Physicians. This collaboration may provide overall needs assessment for the OU/CME office as well as produce future live activities and/or enduring material projects to assist with OU Physicians identified needs.