CME Mission Statement: Improve the competence and performance of medical professionals through medical education-to ultimately improve patient outcomes.  

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Healthcare Professional Members by U.S. Region

Format:

1. Needs Assessment (You tell us what you need in your practice)
2. Education Development (Bias-free and patient-centered)
3. Pre-Test (Measures topic understanding prior to education)
4. Online, Video, Animation, Audio, Print, or Live Presentation (Usually 1-Hour Total Time)
5. Post-Test (Measures Learning Objective Comprehension) 
6. CME Certificate (Upon Satisfactory Post-Test)
7. Survey 1 (How the Education Impacts Your Practice)
8. Survey 2 (How the Education Impacts Your Patient Outcomes)
9. Survey 3 (Community Impact)
10. Needs Assessment (For Continued Improvement) 

​Criteria:

• Patient Mind Inc. addresses practice gaps and incorporates the educational needs of our learners in all activities, including knowledge, competence, and performance.
• Patient Mind Inc. generates activities/educational interventions that are designed to change competence, performance, or patient outcomes as described in its mission statement.
• Patient Mind Inc. chooses educational formats for activities/interventions that are appropriate for the setting, objectives, and desired results of the activity.
• Patient Mind Inc. develops activities/educational interventions in the context of desirable physician attributes.
• Patient Mind Inc. develops activities/educational interventions independent of commercial interests. 
• Patient Mind Inc. appropriately manages commercial support.
• Patient Mind Inc. maintains a separation of promotion from education.
• Patient Mind Inc. actively promotes improvements in health care and NOT proprietary interests of a commercial interest.
• Patient Mind Inc. analyzes changes in learners (competence, performance, or patient outcomes) achieved as a result of the overall program's activities/educational interventions.
• Patient Mind Inc. gathers data or information and conducts a program-based analysis on the degree to which the CME mission of the provider has been met through the conduct of CME activities/educational interventions.
• Patient Mind Inc. identifies, plans and implements the needed or desired changes in the overall program (eg, planners, teachers, infrastructure, methods, resources, facilities, interventions) that are required to improve on ability to meet the CME mission.
• Patient Mind Inc. operates in a manner that integrates CME into the process for improving professional practice.
• Patient Mind Inc. utilizes non-education strategies to enhance change as an adjunct to its activities/educational interventions (e.g., reminders, patient feedback).
• Patient Mind Inc. identifies factors outside the provider's control that impact patient outcomes.
• Patient Mind Inc. implements educational strategies to remove, overcome or address barriers to physician change.
• Patient Mind Inc. builds bridges with other stakeholders through collaboration and cooperation.
• Patient Mind Inc. participates within an institutional or system framework for quality improvement.
• Patient Mind Inc. is positioned to influence the scope and content of activities/educational interventions.
• Patient Mind Inc. members are part of inter-professional teams that are engaged in the planning and delivery of inter-professional continuing education.
• Patient Mind Inc. Patient/public representatives are engaged in the planning and delivery of CME.
• Patient Mind Inc. Students of the health professions are engaged in the planning and delivery of CME.
• Patient Mind Inc. advances the use of health and practice data for healthcare improvement.
• Patient Mind Inc. addresses factors beyond clinical care that affect the health of populations.
• Patient Mind Inc. collaborates with other organizations to more effectively address population health issues.
• Patient Mind Inc. designs CME to optimize communication skills of learners.
• Patient Mind Inc. designs CME to optimize technical and procedural skills of learners.
• Patient Mind Inc. creates individualized learning plans for learners.
• Patient Mind Inc. utilizes support strategies to enhance change as an adjunct to its CME.
• Patient Mind Inc. engages in CME research and scholarship.
• Patient Mind Inc. supports the continuous professional development of its CME team.
• Patient Mind Inc. demonstrates creativity and innovation in the evolution of its CME program.
• Patient Mind Inc. demonstrates improvement in the performance of learners.
• Patient Mind Inc. demonstrates healthcare quality improvement.
• Patient Mind Inc. demonstrates the impact of the CME program on patients or their communities.

Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education. Retrieved from https://www.accme.org/accreditation-rules/accreditation-criteria. Accessed Jan 2019.

Standards:

• Patient Mind Inc. ensures that the following decisions are made free of the control of a commercial interest.
  • Identification of CME needs.
  • Determination of educational objectives.
  • Selection and presentation of content.
  • Selection of all persons and  organizations  that will be in a position to control the content of the CME.
  • Selection of educational methods.
  • Evaluation of the activity.
  • Patient Mind Inc. does not allow commercial interest to take the role of non-accredited partner in a joint provider relationship.
  • Patient Mind Inc. discloses all relevant financial relationships with any commercial interest of everyone involved in the education. 
  • Patient Mind Inc. disqualifies anyone refusing disclosure of relevant financial relationships in all aspects of the education. 
  • Patient Mind Inc. implements a contract to identify and resolve all conflicts of interest prior to the education activity being delivered to learners.  
  • Patient Mind Inc. makes all decisions regarding the disposition and disbursement of commercial support.  
  • Patient Mind Inc. and all involved in the education does not accept advice or services concerning teachers, authors, or participants or other education matters, including content, from a commercial interest as conditions of contributing funds or services.  
  • All commercial support associated with a CME activity must be given with the full knowledge and approval of Patient Mind Inc.
  • Patient Mind Inc. operates under contract clearly stating the terms, conditions, and purposes of the commercial support. The contract is signed and agreed upon between Patient Mind Inc., all commercial support, and educational partner(s). 
  • Patient Mind Inc. specifies the commercial interest that is the source of commercial support.  
  • Patient Mind Inc.and the commercial supporter must sign the written agreement between Patient Mind Inc. and the commercial supporter.
  • Patient Mind Inc. has written policies and procedures governing honoraria and reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses for planners, teachers and authors.
  • Patient Mind Inc. pays directly any teacher or author honoraria or reimbursement of out-of–pocket expenses in compliance with the Patient Mind Inc. written policies and procedures.
  • No other payment is given to the director of the activity, planning committee members, teachers or authors, joint provider, or any others involved with the supported activity.
  • Teachers and authors are reimbursed and receive honoraria for their role only.
  • Patient Mind Inc. social events or meals at CME activities do not compete with or take precedence over the educational events.
  • Patient Mind Inc. does not use commercial support to pay for travel, lodging, honoraria, or personal expenses for non-teacher or non-author participants of a CME activity. Patient Mind Inc. may use commercial support to pay for travel, lodging, honoraria, or personal expenses for bona fide employees and volunteers of the provider, joint provider or educational partner.
  • Patient Mind Inc. provides accurate documentation detailing the receipt and expenditure of the commercial support.  
  • Commercial exhibits or advertisements does not influence planning or interfere with Patient Mind Inc. presentations, nor are they a condition of the provision of commercial support for CME activities.
  • Product-promotion material or product-specific advertisement of any type is prohibited in or during Patient Mind Inc. CME activities. All promotional activities are kept separate from CME.
  • Print, advertisements and promotional materials will not be inter-leafed within the pages of the CME content. Advertisements and promotional materials may face the first or last pages of printed CME content as long as these materials are not related to the CME content they face and are not paid for by the commercial supporters of the CME activity.
  • For computer based CME activities, advertisements and promotional materials will not be visible on the screen at the same time as the CME content and not interleafed between computer ‘windows’ or screens of the CME content. 
  • Patient Mind Inc. will not place their CME activities on a Web site owned or controlled by a commercial interest. 
  • With clear notification that the learner is leaving the educational Web site, links from https://www.patientmind.org/ to pharmaceutical and device manufacturers’ product Web sites are permitted before or after the educational content of a CME activity, but shall not be embedded in the educational content of a CME activity. 
  • Patient Mind Inc. prohibits advertising of any type within the educational content of CME activities on the Internet including, but not limited to, banner ads, subliminal ads, and pop-up window ads.
  • For audio and video recordings, advertisements and promotional materials will not be included within the CME. 
  • Patient Mind Inc. does not allow commercial breaks.
  • For live, face-to-face CME, advertisements and promotional materials cannot be displayed or distributed in the educational space immediately before, during, or after a CME activity. Patient Mind Inc. will not allow representatives of Commercial Interests to engage in sales or promotional activities while in the space or place of the CME activity.
  • For journal-based CME, none of the elements of journal-based CME can contain any advertising or product group messages of commercial interests. The learner must not encounter advertising within the pages of the article or within the pages of the related questions or evaluation materials.
  • Educational materials that are part of a CME activity, such as slides, abstracts and handouts, cannot contain any advertising, corporate logo, trade name or a product-group message of an ACCME-defined commercial interest.  
  • Print or electronic information distributed about the non-CME elements of a CME activity that are not directly related to the transfer of education to the learner, such as schedules and content descriptions, may include product-promotion material or product-specific advertisement.  
  • Patient Mind Inc. does not use a commercial interest as the agent providing a CME activity to learners.
  • Patient Mind Inc. content and format of a CME activity or its related materials promotes improvements and quality in healthcare and not a specific proprietary business interest of a commercial interest.  
  • Patient Mind Inc. presentations give a balanced view of therapeutic options. Use of generic names will contribute to this impartiality. If the CME educational material or content includes trade names, where available trade names from several companies should be used, not just trade names from a single company.  
  • An individual must disclose to learners any relevant financial relationship(s), to include the following information: The name of the individual; The name of the commercial interest(s); The nature of the relationship the person has with each commercial interest.
  • For an individual with no relevant financial relationship(s) the learners must be informed that no relevant financial relationship(s) exist.  
  • The source of all support from commercial interests are disclosed to learners. When commercial support is "in-kind‟ the nature of the support must be disclosed to learners.  Disclosure must never include the use of a corporate logo, trade name or a product-group message of an ACCME-defined commercial interest.  
  • Patient Mind Inc. discloses the above information to learners prior to the beginning of the educational activity.  

Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education. Retrieved from https://www.accme.org/accreditation-rules/accreditation-criteria. Accessed Jan 2019.