Continuing medical education (CME) is essential for medical providers and physicians to continuously manage and track. Physicians are required to complete a certain number of CME credits each time they renew their license, so it isn’t something that should be overlooked.
Medical associations and organizations that offer CME courses play a significant role in that process. When associations offer high-quality continuing education courses through an accessible system, it helps physicians complete requirements while gaining valuable knowledge that helps them provide better service to patients.
The right learning management system (LMS) can help make CME course creation, delivery, and credit tracking much easier. For example, our EthosCE LMS at Cadmium offers many features that simplify CME management and delivery to help associations deliver impactful learning options to medical professionals.
How does EthosCE help? Stick around to get all the details and learn how your organization can start using it to make your CME program more successful.
What Is EthosCE?
EthosCE is an LMS that’s tailored to the specific needs of healthcare continuing education, including CME management. Having a healthcare LMS like EthosCE is highly beneficial because it offers features that:
- Assist with compliance in the medical industry.
- Make it easier to learn and apply healthcare education materials through different modes of instruction.
- Help educational providers easily organize and update courses as regulations and top treatment methods change.
- Keep learners engaged and track progress.
- Create blended learning options that combine online courses and in-person workshops or events.
- Automate reporting to accrediting organizations and CME credit tracking systems.
All of these features and more that come with EthosCE allow CME providers to offer well-rounded educational options to their members while helping them stay on top of their credit requirements.
What Is the Difference Between CME and CE?
All healthcare professionals can benefit from taking continuing education courses since the industry is always changing with new research, technology, and treatment methods.
The main difference between continuing medical education (CME) and continuing education (CE) is who the courses and activities are designed for. CME focuses on courses and continuing education requirements for physicians, while CE refers to continuing education options for many types of medical professionals, such as nurses, technicians, or dentists.
When you use our EthosCE LMS, it can help organizations provide both CME and CE courses for healthcare professionals. That way, all members of a medical association or all professionals you’re overseeing at a medical facility have options available to learn and gain new skills that help advance their careers.
Why Is Continuing Education Important in Medicine?
Healthcare continuing education is important because it helps professionals review information to maintain competency while also remaining current with advancements in the industry.
Research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) emphasizes that continuing education is essential throughout the healthcare industry to ensure professionals are performing accurately and providing the best possible patient care.
What Is the Purpose of CME?
The specific purpose of CME is to ensure that physicians are staying up to date on the latest treatment methods, providing the best possible patient service, and refreshing on any key topics and diagnostic strategies for their field.
Regulations requiring physicians to complete a certain number of CME credits to renew their license are put in place for a reason. It’s meant to ensure physicians perform at their best at all times and stay committed to learning throughout their careers.
What Makes CME Management Challenging for Healthcare Systems?
While CME is crucial for physicians, it’s common for healthcare systems and educational providers to find it challenging to manage everything involved in delivering high-quality courses, maintaining compliance, and reporting credits.
Some of the main issues come from operational complexity. Elements like budgeting, compliance, and fragmented systems can all place a strain on educational providers and healthcare systems. The right medical education software can help with that by making it more cost-effective to deliver high-quality courses while creating an organized system.
Engagement is another top concern. Medical professionals have busy schedules and only so much time to dedicate to completing CME activities. If they don’t stay engaged with the course, it can be easy for them to stop making progress altogether. Systems that help send reminders, make course materials interactive, deliver content in different formats, and make learning materials accessible on all devices can help with that.
Lastly, it can be hard for healthcare systems and educational providers to prove value for their courses. A lot of learning options are available, but not all of them provide the same quality of education. Systems that help show real-world outcomes, assess knowledge, and report success can all help prove the value of the courses you offer.
How Does EthosCE Simplify Complex Accreditation Workflows?
Another common concern for medical organizations and associations is CME accreditation management. Governing organizations like the ACCME set strict requirements that CME providers must adhere to, ensuring they provide quality learning outcomes.
Educational providers also need to report CME credits completed to the ACCME or other tracking systems such as JA PARS, CE Broker, or CPE Monitor.
EthosCE helps simplify complex accreditation workflows using advanced reporting and automated systems. It continuously tracks CME credits awarded, displays learner progress through a clear dashboard, sends timely reminders about important deadlines, and automatically reports to the ACCME, JA PARS, CE Broker, and CPE Monitor.
While no LMS can guarantee compliance since it depends on the system your organization puts in place, all of those features will help assist with complex compliance requirements and ensure timely reporting of all CME credits completed. It removes a lot of administrative burden in the process, so your team doesn’t have to manually manage everything. To read more about How An LMS Can Simplify Continuing Medical Education, read our blog.
What Features Help CME Coordinators Deliver Training Programs More Efficiently?
Features of a healthcare LMS that can make CME program management and delivery more efficient include:
- Automatic credit tracking and reporting
- Real-time analytics and dashboards
- Drag-and-drop content authoring to simplify course creation
- Efficient content editing processes to make it easy to update courses as needed
- The ability to send automatic reminders to learners
- Webinar and live event integration for different learning options
- Scalability so you can continue building your content library as your organization grows
- Integration with the software you use, such as your association management system (AMS)
EthosCE provides all of these features and more to make it much easier for CME coordinators to stay on top of requirements. It’s designed to help associations deliver custom learning solutions while automating frequent tasks so even small teams can get started providing great learning options.
How Do Personalized Learning Paths Improve Educational Outcomes?
Another important aspect of content delivery and management is personalized learning paths. As your course library grows, it can be hard for learners to decide which CME courses are the best fit for their needs. Personalized learning helps by recommending content based on courses learners have completed previously or where they are in their career journey.
EthosCE also allows you to create a searchable course library to help learners find what they’re looking for without having to scroll through tons of different options.
How Does EthosCE Improve Learner Engagement for Busy Professionals?
As mentioned, medical professionals have busy schedules and limited time to complete CME courses. EthosCE has many features that help improve learner engagement, including:
- Mobile learning options so members can access courses on mobile devices and complete materials on the go
- Automatic notifications to check in on course progress and ensure professionals complete the required amount of CME credits before their license renewal date
- Interactive learning activities to help reinforce information covered
- Assessments and quizzes to track progress throughout courses and show members what they’ve learned so far
- Multimedia support so you can deliver content in different formats, such as audio, video, or livestreams
- Blended learning options so you can combine in-person events and workshops with online courses
- Social learning and user-generated content so that course members can interact and learn from each other’s experiences
Each of these features makes CME courses feel more well-rounded. When members can learn in different ways, interact with each other, and clearly see the progress they’re making, it keeps them engaged and on track to complete course requirements.
How Does EthosCE Fit Into Cadmium's Unified Event and Education Ecosystem?
At Cadmium, our goal is to provide associations with the tools they need to deliver impactful events, videos, and learning options to their members. We offer several software solutions that help with that, including our EthosCE healthcare LMS, event management system Eventscribe, and our livestreaming solution Warpwire.
All of our software integrates to create a unified event and education ecosystem. For example, you can integrate Eventscribe and EthosCE to allow CME course members to participate in in-person workshops or events. This creates a blended learning solution where medical professionals can apply what they’ve learned in a real-world setting, which is often an important part of healthcare education.
You can also add Warpwire to livestream events for members who can’t attend or host virtual workshops, adding more features to your online education system.
Learn More About How EthosCE Can Help
All the features included with EthosCE make it a great choice for medical organizations and associations delivering and managing CME content. It assists with compliance, keeps your team organized, has features to improve engagement, and allows you to deliver learning materials in many different formats.
Explore EthosCE, and contact us today to learn how it can make a difference for your organization!
