>>MARTIN: So again, welcome everyone. Again, my name is Marcia Martin. I'm a ACCME's manager provider for education and outreach. You've joined the ACCME's webinar on CME that counts for ABA MOCA 2.0 and ABP MOC. Today, our intent is to talk with you about the fact that PARS is now available for you to register activities that meet the expectations of both the ABA and ABP and Maintenance of Certification programs. So let's go ahead to the next slide. Over the next hour, we have a lot of ground to cover. We want to give you a little bit of information about kind of how we've gotten here. History and background. And then, ACCME staff is going to walk you through how to register activities for MOC points and PARS and our program and activity reporting system. As well as how to submit participants data.
>>MARTIN: Some of you may be familiar with this because you've been doing it for ABIM MOC points, for some of you this might be brand new. So this will be a helpful tutorial and we'll also point you to resources that you can access after this webinar to be able to enter activities or register activities for MOC points. Then we'll have a Q and A time, as I mentioned. Hopefully we'll have about 20-25 minutes to open up a line and field some of your questions. And then we'll wrap things up. So that's our plan for the next hour. I want to also introduce you to the staff that you'll be possibly hearing from today.
>>MARTIN: We are pleased to have both staff from the American board of Anesthesiology and the American Board of Pediatrics on the line with us as well as ACCME staff. From the American Board of Anesthesiology we have Ann Harman, Anna Menzies and Diana Davidson joining us. So you might hear from one of them during the Q and A session. From the American Board of Pediatrics we have Kristi Gilreath and Melissa Lamaffar with us. And then ACCME staff is, we have Dr. Graham McMahon with us, our CEO.
>>MARTIN: We have Norma Castrejon, and Ed Kennedy from our operations and information technology department, and myself. And then also, I don't have Melody on here. You'll hear me referring to Melody, we have Melody Latham on the line, who is our technology guru, she's our brains behind the operation if you will. So, she'll be helping us conduct the webinar. Okay, so with that I'm going to go ahead and turn things over to our president and CEO, Graham McMahon so he can talk with you a little bit about how we've gotten to where we are now, the history and background of this collaboration. Graham?
>>McMAHON: Thanks very much, Marcia. And hi everybody. Great chance to have a chance to chat with you today and launch this new collaboration that we're putting in place for MOC programs. And I'm particularly delighted to welcome our colleges from ABA and ABP, who are making a difference with us through this process. And now, I'll just remind you that our focus here really is in making a difference. Remember, our primary mission as educators is to leverage education’s capacity to drive knowledge improvements, competency improvements, performance improvements in our hospitals and systems. And our role here at ACCME is to help you do your work to reach as many people as you can, to drive that differ ence. To get them engaged and keep them engaged. Drive learning that matters to quality education and self-assessment programs, and then drive learning that really enhances the longitudinal relationship with you as the educational provider, so that you can maintain those changes in performance and help drive self-awareness.
And we do these things, reaching people, getting them engaged in learning that matters, by creating collaborations that work. And that's exactly what we're launching today is additional collaborations beyond our primary one, that we launched last year with ABIM, to now, say, you can do activities and encourage your clinicians to engage with you, because you can issue ABP MOC points, and ABA MOC points for the work that you're already doing. That's already high quality and meeting those types of clinicians' needs. And I think the remarkable thing about the collaborations we've developed with these boards, has been our common view that the work you're doing in education really does matter, and coming to consensus about the types of activities that count for MOC. They don't have to be very focused, a specific type of activity. They need to be just education that works. And our understanding of what works and what has impact and what drives change, has evolved as we learn more about education and educational psychology and pedagogy.
So we've been delighted to create a harmonization, largely amongst these three participating boards in what matters, so that you can not just register activities for multiple boards for the same type of activity, but then create those collaborative activities that meet the expectations of multiple types of attendees, but also creating activities that you may not have registered through one of these boards before, that may be important for these types of learners. Whether it's a pain program that you developed for internists that may actually be relevant for some anesthesiologists, or it's a program in communication that may be incredibly relevant for pediatricians. Now you have an opportunity to meet the needs of a diverse audience, and for those activities that you're already doing, for pediatricians or anesthesiologists or others, now be able to recognize those and open them up to a broader community who can engage with them through their use and availability on our search engine.
So a lot more consistency, a lot more simplification, a lot more alignment and a lot more encouragement for you to continue the terrific work that you're doing out there, and do it more, and do it better, and reach more people and make a difference. So really terrific to have this collaboration. That's really built off of much of the work we initially did with ABIM last year. As you can see in this timeline, we've now reported hundreds of thousands of credits from thousands of activities for ABIM, and we hope to be able to do exactly the same now for pediatrics and anesthesiology, and engage those clinicians in the work that you're already doing. We announced our collaboration back in April, and right now we're opening up PARS, our data systems, for registering activities for ABP and ABA, MOC. And our goals are very simple. Because we've created a lot of consensus now about what counts between different boards for activities that matter for the MOC programs, and liberated the view of what works in self-assessment, we're now encouraging you to register activities for the ABIM, ABP and ABA MOC programs directly on our web site.
You can now list your activities so they can be found in our search engine, cmefinder.org, and allow you to submit participant data directly through PARS to the boards, so that clinicians are not required to manage those paper certificates or other types of documentation. Essentially, it's managed seamlessly for them, because the trust that we place in you as CME providers, and accredited CME providers at that, to do this accurately and do it right. So, really excited to do this collaboration, work with our colleagues in this initial cohort of boards. It will be successful only if you take advantage of us. There's only so much of, so to speak, a gate that we can open for you as providers. You have to walk down through them now and register your activities, and start doing activities that meet the expectations of the boards. And so I'm optimistic that, just like with the ABIM program, many of you will take on this opportunity and take advantage of it. And to guide you on how to go and do that, I'm going to pass you over to my colleague who's sitting beside me here, Norma Castrejon, who's going to walk you down through the actual process itself.. So Norma, over to you.
>>CASTREJON: Thank you. Again, my name is Norma Castrejon and I'm the Systems Implementation Project Manager here at ACCME. I will be giving you a high level overview of how to register activities for MOC and PARS, as well as how to submit participant data into PARS. So this first screenshot that you see here is the PARS log in screen and what we pretty much want to show you is that in order to register an activity for MOC, all you need to do is log into the PARS system. You use your current email address and password with your organization ID and then you'd be ready to go in and start registering activities. If you've already registered activities for ABIM, then you may be familiar with this process. So the first step we want to let you know is very important. The one thing we're asking you is that you understand the program expectation for each of the boards. The reason we ask this is because to attest that that specific activity that you want to register for MOC meets the requirement for the specific board. As you can see listed here is our partnerships with ABIM, ABA and ABP and there were some hand-outs sent to you via the webinar, for the ABA and ABP program requirements, so that you can go ahead and grab those and start reviewing them as you start to think about maybe an activity that you would like to register for either of these programs.
>>MARTIN: Norma, this is Marcia. I want to just interject for one moment. I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt your flow, but thank you very much because that's something I forgot to mention at the onset of the Webinar, is that you all have a documents panel in your go to Webinar panel. You have a document section and those two documents that Norma referenced should be there for you to access and review. So you're welcome to look at them during the Webinar or after, but they're there for your review. Sorry, go ahead Norma.
>>CASTREJON: It's okay. Okay so once you log into PARS and you go into the activity screen, this is the summary page. I think a lot of you are familiar with this just because when you register your activities, this is where you go. This is also where you can go and register your activities for MOC. There's the “add activity” button as well as the “update” link highlighted there. A couple of things I did want to note, is that for an activity to be registered for ABP MOC, you have to select the 2017 reporting year. You will not be allowed to register an ABP MOC activity for the 2016 reporting year. And for ABA MOCA Program, the activity end date must be after November 1st, 2016 or after in order to register for the activity. So you can register an activity for the 2016 reporting year, but it has to be a current activity that took place after November 1st, 2016 with the activity end date being that date or after. So when you select “add activity”, you'll be taken to the activities details page, which part of that page is highlighted here. This is the Maintenance of Certification section of that details page and there's three things we want to highlight here.
First is, if you answer yes to the question that you'd like to register activity for MOC to get MOC points or credits, then these three boards open up and you get to select which board you want to choose to register the activity, whether it's ABA, ABIM or ABP. For the purposes of this Webinar, you'll see that we're showing the ABA registration. Step number two shows where you go ahead and check the box where you're attesting to those four or five bullet points, and each board has their separate list of bullet points that you're attesting to, but one of them for sure, is that you're attesting to the program guide that we provided to you through the hand out. Once you check that box, then the whole section for number three will go ahead and expand and you'll go ahead and start filling out that section, where in this example, if you choose a practice area. You'll see that the CME category one credit show how many credits will be given for this specific activity and for ABA, you can choose whether you want to select “patient safety” to get credit for this activity, and if you would select yes, then you would have to attest to that specific question as well.
In addition for ABA, there's the MOCA content outline, where you would have to select specific content areas for your activity. For ABP, it would be very similar. The only difference is that they do not do patient safety and there is no content outline that you would need to fill out. So once that section is filled out, then towards the bottom of the activity details page, is the CME Finder field and it is something that Graham spoke about. This is a tool that we use for our learners to help them find CME activities that are registered right now for ABIM's MOC program. We are looking into having the activities that are registered for ABA or ABP MOC to be available in the CME Finder tool in early 2017, so look for that, at that time. There are four specific fields that you need to fill out. There's the activity end date. There's a question on whether there's a fee for participating in the activity. The activity URL and that's if you have a specific URL for the activity or if not, you could point straight to your website itself.
And then the last is whether this registration of the activity is open to all for the public, or if it's limited to either a specific audience, membership or your specific organization. So that is what you would fill out for the activities detail stage in order to register an activity for MOC. But we want to show you what the CME Finder would look like. So you register an activity and right now you'll see it's only ABIM. Now it's going to come up so that the learner can go in and look for activities that will give them MOC credit. The screenshot on the left is the home page, and so you're taken to that home page and you're allowed to select whether it's registered for ABIM. In the future you'll also have the option of selecting ABA and ABP. Whether the activity is compliant with REMS, and you're also able to select a specific provider, or joint provider, and then select “search”. And once you select the “search” button, the search results come out and that's on the left-hand side. And you'll see that there's different columns that're available. There's the activity provider, the activity type, the number of points, the registration, the end date of the activity. Then you're able to filter this list even further by key word, by activity type, location, fee, the dates, number of credits and as well as keyword. So that's what the CMEfinder.org tool looks like for the learners. So that's it for activity registration.
Now we'll go on and move on to how to submit data for participant completion data for MOC in PARS. Once your activity is complete, then you'll need to go in and submit participant data through PARS. And the reason you have to do that, is that by attesting that you want to register the activity for MOC, you're agreeing to report participant data via PARS. And we ask that you report this data in a timely fashion. This is to benefit the diplomate or learner, because they do have to have some points that need to be done by the end of the year and they also like to check their points that are available to them via their certifying board. So we'll go ahead and talk a little bit about the process for submitting the data into PARS. You'll go ahead again and log into the PARS system via the same login email and password. You'll be taken to the home page. From that homepage, on the bottom of that page you can see that it's highlighted, where it says “report participants” and you go ahead and click here. Once you click here, it'll take you to a separate page, which is the PARS participant management interface. And you could tell that you're in the PARS participant management interface really by the header.
So if you notice the header for the participant submission page is maroon, versus the header for the regular PARS page is a blue header. So now you're ready to submit data for participant, and there's multiple ways that you can do that. We have via a web interface, where you can just enter the data right through PARS. The second way is via a tab delimited form or XML form for a batch upload. And then the third way is via web services. So there's three ways that you can enter data to give you flexibility on what works best for your system. And every board has separate requirements on what you need to submit for your participant data, but across the board you really do need your diplomates board ID, and the date of completion. But we do ask you to read the requirements for each of the speciality boards so that you know what you need to report for each participant based on the activity that you registered for.
This screenshot, we just want to show you a little bit of the error messages that would come up. This is the web interface for entering participant data, and then here there EW a few errors that came up. There's diplomat data first it does not match the board record, the diplomate ID was not found. And the missing MOC points field was not filled out. These errors would come up and that would allow you to go back and rectify that data, so that you can then resubmit it until it's successful. If you have questions on the error messages or you can't figure it out, you're always welcome to send us an email at info@accme.org. That is it for participant submission, and now I will hand it over to Marcia, where she'll take over with educational support.
>>MARTIN: Fabulous. Thank you so much Norma. A lot of the information that you just saw Norma present, we actually took these from two tutorials that we posted on our ACCME website. So if you were to go to www.accme.org which is our homepage, and click on the education link, you'll see that circled in the middle, top middle of the page. You'll see a menu on the left hand side which has tutorials listed. These are actually some of the newer tutorials listed, so they're kind of at the top of the list, you'll see some icons, some thumbnails. And, they're how to register participant data for MOC, and how to register your activity for MOC credit. So, both of those tutorials are available, and they walk through in a little bit more detail what Norma just gave us an overview of.
So those are a great first reference if this is all new to you. We also have posted some frequently asked questions, specifically about CME that counts for MOC points. And you can access those through the “Ask ACCME” link. So you'll see that also circled in this screenshot of our homepage. And there's a special section in the menu on our “Ask ACCME” page, that's all about maintenance and certification. Finally, well, not finally, but also all of the requirements that you need to review, or the different board requirements that you need to review can also be found, if you look at our homepage right now there's this “CME that counts for MOC” splash screen or rotation featured item. And if you click on that that will take you to a main landing page that talks about these collaborations.
And, it has a page for each of the cooperations, one for ABIM, one for ABP, and one for ABA, and the individual pages have the different boards' requirements. They align very largely with ACCME requirements, but there are some special considerations for each of the boards that you have to be aware of, and you have to become familiar with and know before you register an activity for MOC points. So those are available, and as I mentioned they're also on your document panel that you can access those now if you like. And, then finally there's some, a page with some technical assistance, technical resources, specifically about the web service etcetera that you can access. You go to ACCME.org/technical-information. That will give you some additional technical resources regarding registering activities for MOC points.
Okay, so now we've come to the question/answer portion of our meeting. Several of you have typed in some questions, and I am going to go ahead, and we're going to unmute some of your lines. We're going to start with questions specifically around data entry. So, I have one question I'm going to read, it's a pretty quick question, and Graham and I will interact with these, and then you may hear some input from Norma or from the board folks as well. So I'm going to direct these questions to Graham, and you all can ask your questions to Graham when we unmute your line, and then we'll figure out from there who's going to answer it. But this question Graham is a broad one, and I think something we kind of skimmed over, and I think it's really great for us to answer. Somebody has asked, is this, what we're talking about, is it specifically for part two MOC or part four? So maybe you could start off by answering that question and I'll find somebody else to unmute.
>>McMAHON: Yeah, these are all about part two, the medical knowledge components. And though we were talking with several boards around part four requirements, that's not the focus of this collaboration right now.
>>MARTIN: Great. Thank you very much. Okay, so next I see a question chatted in, I'm going to put it under this category because I think it comes to whenever you're entering it, this is good to know. I see Cyndi Grimes has asked a question. So, I'm going to give Melody a moment to locate Cyndi and we're going to unmute her line. So Cyndi your line's unmuted, go ahead with your question.
>>GRIMES: Yes. Hi. I was just wondering if an activity could be eligible, for example, for the American Board of Pediatrics, as well as the American Board of Internal Medicine? And could you identify an activity as being valid for both boards?
>>McMAHON: Yes, great question Cyndi. Graham here again. You can click as many boards as are participating in this program. Right now you could have a communications or a pain program or something that's eligible and appropriate for all three types of learners. So you could register for Internal Medicine, Anesthesia, and Pediatrics, and issue those credits for a diffuse group of learners that you have in your program, once they've completed it. Or you can register for just one or a combination of any of the three participating boards right now. And, obviously as more boards might come in the coming months, then you will be able to meet multiple learner MOC types with single activities.
And much of the conversation we've had with the boards has been around making sure, that activities that you're already doing that might meet the needs of multiple audience members, we'll be able to issue the same types of credit. So, as long as you have registered the activity, you have a sign-in process that gets you the date of birth, whatever the learner data you're required, you have an assessment process in place that meets the requirements of the boards, and all of the boards pretty much agree on what that assessment process should be, and then agree to report learner data. You can meet the needs of multiple types of learners in your system.
>>GRIMES:: Great, thank you.
>>MARTIN: Thank you Cyndi. And I actually have a question that kind of dovetails off of that. Oh, okay, and actually I see that Amanda, we can't unmute her line, but since it is directly related Graham, I'm going to read this question. So, if a course is approved for multiple boards, for example ABA and ABIM, and the participants are multi-boarded she's asking, will they have to report them twice, or just under a single submission with both diplomate numbers?
>>McMAHON: So first of all, certainly several diplomates are multiply boarded, but you need to report separately to each individual board. So if they're boarded in pediatrics and let's say, pediatric anesthesia, then you should report... You complete the report data for pediatrics with the ABP number, and then the report data for anesthesia with the anesthesia number, and that clinician will get the points accordingly.
>>MARTIN: Great. Thank you. Now we're going to go to Susan Hayes who has a question also about data entry. Susan is asking if there's any way for the participants to be responsible for entering the information rather than the organizer of the event?
>>McMAHON: Thanks Susan. So, we have essentially assigned this responsibility to the CME providers, rather then the participants because we trust you to manage flaws in your system, and only you can tell whether a learner has satisfactorily completed the activity to the expectations of the board. And as a result, only you can determine which learners to report to the boards of having satisfactorily reached the standard expected, and learners cannot complete this information. Having said that, most providers who've done the ABIM program have found that they set up an iPad or during the electronic registration for a meeting for example, they obtain the type of information that they need to ensure that once learners complete the activity acknowledging that of course, most learners completing activity will do so satisfactorily.
They're able to essentially compile an Excel data sheet and upload that into the system so that the learner data is automatically reported for the organization over to the board. And that's worked very well for organizations that have more moderate size programs. If you have a small program and all you're doing is small group activities with 10 or 15 people attending a noon conference or something like that, then you can just do the manual web-fill form. And if you are a larger program that has an annual meeting with hundreds of people or thousands, then the XML data transfer may be the best model for you. But essentially, the obligation is on the CME provider to upload the learner completion data, and this is not something learners can do, and that's intentional.
>>MARTIN: Great. Thank you very much Graham. Okay, so for the next question I'm going to... Now I see Tomas, that you also have joined us with mic and speaker. So we're going to try to unmute your line and see if it works. We have Tomas Torcies, I hope I got right... Asking a question about one of the error messages that we've shown and some data that you have to collect. So, Tomas, we've unmuted your line. You can go ahead.
>>TORICES: Can you hear me?
>>MARTIN: Yeah, perfectly.
>>TORICES: Okay. So my other question was, in the last three years, in order for the attendees to obtain MOC part two, they had to complete a post-conference assessment. So we asked speakers to provide four to six questions, and then we developed a questionnaire. And the assessment was completed by each attendee, and after the completion of such assessment, then we would record completion of the requirements for MOC. What happens now with this new program, because I heard that that may not necessarily be the case?
>>McMAHON: Great. Well, good question. Thanks Tomas. And, first of all, I direct you to the requirements particularly of ABP's program, so that you can learn more about this after the call. But fundamentally, the expectation is that for both ABIM and ABP, that you have an evaluation component at the end of your activity, that satisfies the boards that the learner has adequately reached the knowledge attainment you expect from that program. Now what's changed is, that while that used to be a multiple choice test or some sort of written assessment, the boards just like ACCME have acknowledged that there are many other ways of demonstrating that the learner has adequately participated in the activity. Such that spoken conversations of adequate engagement in the activity, would meet the expectations for the boards and for us, or the chair of the meeting of that case conversation of ten people, can say all ten people participated adequately.
Or you could ask clinicians to write down what they learned during a session and, assuming that was adequate, then that would meet the expectations for the organizations as having met a self-assessment component. And that allows you essentially much greater flexibility in the way you think about assessment of your activity, to match up with the learning expectations for that activity. Whether that's cognitive processing, or skill development or otherwise. So read more about those expectations in the handouts from ABP, in particular. ABA's requirements reflect ACCME's which require some degree of assessment in the program, but ABP and ABIM have specific expectations that are quite aligned with each other.
>>TORICES: Excellent, thank you.
>>MARTIN: Thanks Thomas. We have a couple of questions from Jan Balmer.
>>BALMER: Our first question was: Is it possible to upload bulk MOC activity data? Or for multiple activities to be uploaded in bulk?
>>KENNEDY: Yeah, you can do a bulk upload of MOC registered activities using the XML file format. The text format's not available for bulk upload activities.
>>BALMER: Okay and our second question was: How long after an activity is entered, is it visible or searchable to the learner on the activity finder?
>>MARTIN: The CME finder.
>>BALMER: I'm sorry, the CME Finder?
>>CASTREJON: So right now for ABIM, if you register an activity then it would be available the following day.
>>MARTIN: Okay, great, thank you both very much.
>>BALMER: Wait, I've got one more question.
>>MARTIN: Oh, one more, okay, go ahead.
>>BALMER: I know there's a limit on the number of people from an organization that can have user IDs and passwords. What is the maximum number of user IDs and passwords per org?
>>CASTREJON: It's five accounts.
>>BALMER: Okay, we can't get that changed huh?
>>CASTREJON: Not at this time.
>>McMAHON: Five should be plenty Jan to give you the flexibility you need to upload this information to PARS or designate people who will. Obviously, we want to be careful about how we manage the security and access to our system.
>>BALMER: Okay, alright, I just thought it was worth asking. [laughter] Thanks.
>>MARTIN: Great, thank you Jan. Okay, next we're going to go, so since we had a question about bulk upload, I think Sharon Kelly has a question that's related to that and I think really important to hear about timing. So Norma, this might be a question for you. So let's go ahead and unmute Sharron Kelley's line. Sharon, you're unmuted go ahead with your question.
>>KELLEY: Thank you very much. I have a question about providers who do the Tab Delimited upload at the end of the year into PARS through CME tracking software. How do they work around entering the Maintenance of Certification data, that's very time sensitive and needs to be entered immediately, versus doing the Tab Delimited upload at the end of the year?
>>McMAHON: Some of the software programs are updating their interfaces to allow you to report learner completion data more quickly than once a year and in fact I would hope that all CME providers would try and upload the completion data within a couple of days, or certainly within a couple of weeks. Remember learners really want to see this information uploaded into their transcripts at the board. And you'll avoid a lot of calls, both to us and to you, if you're able to upload the same day or the next day after you've run a program, whether it's a grand rounds or an annual meeting or something.
>>KELLEY: I agree. Thank you very much, I'll check with our software analyst and see what we can do to adjust our current reporting process.
>>McMAHON: Yeah and you can always do an export from your software into Excel generally, or XML, and be able to directly upload that into PARS then too.
>>KELLY: Thank you.
>>MARTIN: Great, thank you very much. Next we're going to go to Rebecca Daniel. Rebecca also had a question about data entry. So let's unmute Rebecca's line. And you're all good to go Rebecca.
>>DANIEL: Hi, can you hear me?
>>MARTIN: We can, yeah.
>>DANIEL: Okay I had a question about potential to communicate directly with the boards to obtain the database regarding the members numbers so we could enter it into PARS, or rather than contacting each member individually and obtaining their ID.
>>McMAHON: Well I'll let Kristi or Anna answer that question but my understanding is that, the system will recognize clinicians where there's a mismatch in their identity. I don't think the boards are willing to publicly make available the list of diplomates and their identity numbers and instead prefer that to be managed through the secure systems that the ACCME manages. Well obviously, Anna or Kristi, do you want to answer that Kristi?
>>GILREATH: Sure, so as of about a month ago the ABP made available diplomate IDs on our website. So you would need the diplomate's name and an ABP ID will show. It's under 'Is my position certified?'. And this was at the request of ACCME to help you when you’re reporting completion data.
>>DANIEL: Excellent. Thank you.
>>McMAHON: So the opportunity there is, as you're making people register, you can put up a terminal or an iPad or something at the registration desk, ask the clinicians to look up their own ID and then either write it down for you or type it in for you or put a link through an electronic registration, directly to that aperture at ABP so that your learners can get the information for you and you don't have to be searching up tool for all your learner identities. Anna at ABA, any thoughts about that?
>>DAVIDSON: Hi, this is Diana. Beginning with our MOCA 2.0 launch this year in January, we started asking diplomates at the time they register whether they're willing to let us provide ABA ID numbers to CME providers for this express purpose. And so we've started collecting that approval from the diplomates directly and we can compile the list and share it out with accredited providers.
>>McMAHON: Great, thank you Diana. Do you have any idea what the timeline would be for the first available list?
>>DAVIDSON: We certainly can work on it in the next few weeks.
>>McMAHON: Great, thank you.
>>DANIEL: Thank you.
>>MARTIN: Okay, let's go to the next question, from, sorry bear with me. Let's go to Kerri Leo. So Melody, let's unmute Kerri's line. And Kerri, your line is unmuted. Go ahead with your question.
>>LEO: Hi. We have a couple of activities that, they're one issue but they come out twice a year, so there's an issue A and an issue B. And so when we enter the data into PARS, we always enter it as one activity. So when we push the learner data to PARS, does the new data with the new credits override the previous or will it add to it?
>>KENNEDY: This is Ed. If that's being registered for ABIM or ABA, you can report your learner completions for each of the two sections of that activity as they occur. But I think for the ABP reporting, you will need to report the learner completions just once after both sections have been completed by the learner. And you may want to divide up your issue A and issue B into separately listed activities, that's probably the easiest thing to do, so that each time you have a new issue, you create a new activity for it and then report the learners for that particular issue at the end of it.
>>LEO: Okay, thank you.
>>MARTIN: Okay, thanks very much. Carrie, we're going to take one more question in this section, and then we're going to move on to questions about the ABP and ABA requirements. So Anne Grupe has a question, and I think you have a couple questions, but one specifically was about data entry, so maybe you can raise that one now. So let's go ahead and unmute Anne's line. Okay Anne, you're ready to go.
>>GRUPE: Sure. Thank you. So I wanted to ask, if an activity is registered with more than one board and we use a web service to submit our data, do we use this one web service to submit everything to PARS and then PARS distributes to the multiple boards, or are there now different web services, one for each of the boards? [chuckle]
>>KENNEDY: Hi, Anne. It's Ed.
>>GRUPE: Hello.
>>KENNEDY: Hey. [chuckle] There's only one web service for reporting the learner data. You'll need to submit separate records for the different boards, though. But it's still the same web service. Depending on which board you're reporting for, you may need to include some different data in what you send us.
>>GRUPE: Yeah.
>>KENNEDY: We've got separate XML file format instructions posted to the website. So you'll need to have your team kind of take a look through the differences between reporting for ABIM MOC versus the ABP and ABA MOCA programs.
>>GRUPE: But if we have the web service set up, we can accommodate diplomates from multiple boards via the same web service. So you'll just be updating the field requirements for the web service so that we can accurately identify or give the right information for ABP versus ABIM versus ABA?
>>KENNEDY: Yes, that's correct.
>>GRUPE: Okay.
>>KENNEDY: It's the same web service, same address, but the requirements for the data in the record are slightly different for the different programs.
>>GRUPE: Okay. The other question just related to that, is if you're assigning different MOC credit amounts for the same activity for different boards. So for example, if we have a pediatrics track in our annual meeting, we would probably only register that track for ABP MOC, whereas our entire meeting could be registered for ABIM MOC. Is that also something that we're able to do within the web service so that you're not assigning the wrong amount of credit to the wrong diplomates?
>>KENNEDY: Yes. You would be reporting the points in the different learner completion records that you're sending depending on the board for which the completion counts.
>>GRUPE: Okay. Alright, thank you.
>>MARTIN: Oh sorry Graham, go ahead.
>>McMAHON: That's fine Marcia. Obviously you can follow up with us individually on your very specific questions or very technical-related questions. We can handle after the call that are very much dependent on your unique organizational issues that you're facing.
>>MARTIN: Great. Thank you. So we're going to go ahead and move on because we have a little less than 10 minutes left in the call, so let's take some questions. I'm going to actually kind of combine ABA MOCA requirements and ABP requirements because some of them are broadly related to both sets. So Jena, you have a pretty broad question, and I think that we can get to this. So Jena Resner has a question. Let's go ahead and unmute Jena's line. Hey Jena, you're unmuted. Go ahead with your question.
>>RESNER: Great. Hi, thanks. I actually have not had a chance to review in detail, the two sets of requirements the way I did with the ABIM. But just wondering if you can give us the highlights of the differences, in terms of what is required for compliance in ACCME activities and the two new boards. Such as for example with the ABIM, what we discovered is the differences are that there is a requirement for two contact reviewers, as well as the evaluation needs to have some documentation that there was feedback to learners, and we discovered that could be interpreted fairly broadly. But again, those were two things that weren't actually specifically required in everyday CME, but would be if you wanted to attest for MOC ABIM. Are there highlights that you can give us? Obviously, we'll have to read these documents carefully and provide consultation. But what are the highlights that you can say would be the differences that go beyond the compliance standards?
>>McMAHON: Thank you for your question. At the highest level, they are much more similar than they are different. And essentially, if you have experience already managing ABIM MOC programs, you'll readily be able to designate those activities for ABP or ABA, for that matter, because the expectations are just about the same. The only difference that comes to mind immediately for ABP is that some activity types specifically, internet searching and learning, is not eligible for ABP's MOC program, but pretty much everything else is. And the assessment expectations and the feedback expectations for ABP and ABIM are just about identical.
ABA essentially has long recognized accredited CME as the standard of approach for their MOC 2.0 without additional requirements. And that continues today and the only new requirement for ABA's program is that it be listed in PARS and that learner data be reported through PARS for their program. So if it meets the expectations of ABP and ABIM, it will meet ABA's expectations. Remembering that all of their expectations are rooted in our accreditation requirements that you are already very familiar with and do every day. So that essentially we've created a terrific alignment between the boards and the accreditors here to try and make it possible for you to issue multiple types of credits for activities you're already doing, using evaluation strategies that are much broader and that allow you greater flexibility in meeting your learners' needs.
>>MARTIN: Alright, thank you. Thanks Jena and thanks Graham. The next question we are going to go to is from Gordon Ringler, so Gordon, we've unmuted your line. Go ahead with your question.
>>RINGLER: Yes. We just wanted to make sure that when we report an individual for the completion of one of these registered courses that that interfaces with the boards and it's reported to the boards. And also, will we be required to include that participation in our end of year's PARS report, as well?
>>McMAHON: Thanks, Gordon. So the information you transmit through PARS about learner completion is reported directly to those boards for whom you've registered the activity and for whom your learners are designated. So, yes, it should be readily uploaded into the system and we've created an interchange between our system and the participating boards to make that a seamless and simple process for you. So you're uploading your data for multiple types of learners into one system and then our system is distributing that into respective boards.
>>RINGLER: But, and then they'll still be needed to be included in our end of year's PARS report as said, or will that already be counted with the numbers?
>>KENNEDY: At the end of the year, for your annual reporting requirement, you would just need to give us the total number of learners that participated in the activity.
>>RINGLER: Okay. Alright.
>>MARTIN: And we are coming to the, close to time for the webinar, so we do have a couple of other questions that we may not have gotten to. If we didn't get to your question, you can feel free to send those to info@accme.org and they will either go to our very capable Ed and Norma to answer. Or if it's specific to ABP or ABA, we might go ahead and transition out to them. There is one question I want to close on before I go ahead and wrap us up for the day. Actually, it's a series of two questions and they have to do with the fees. Because Norma, they caught that was mentioned when you were talking about inputting. So, one question is, can we charge a fee for individuals outside of our organization, and not charge a fee for individuals within our organization? So does PARS has a flexibility for you to be able to indicate that in the finder, and then also, along with that, if an organization already has a fee included in the registration, because there's a fee for MOC included in the registration, would they check that it has a fee or that it doesn't? So if you could answer those two questions, and then we'll wrap things up.
>>McMAHON: Great, thanks Marcia. Just before I answer that question about fees, one thing for everyone to hear from us is that, in general, the boards want the providers, if they have questions about their MOC programs, to work with us. So if you're an accredited provider in our system and you have questions about meeting the expectations of the boards or interacting with PARS, then please email us at ACCME, and the boards will answer questions from any learners who have questions about credit allocation, etcetera. And obviously we'll work together with the board if there are questions that need our integrated solutions. But in general, providers come to ACCME and learners go to their respective board.
In regards to fees, CME Finder is designed to try and make a simple search engine available to learners, so that they can find activities that meet their specific learning objective, and as a result, there are tags in there that say whether there's a fee associated with the activity, and whether it is restricted to internal or external audiences only. And the reason we have that is because many of our learners may look online, in particular, for activities they can participate in without charge. You can set any charges you want for your activities. We don't require or restrict your ability to charge a fee for your educational programs, but there is no way of designating different types of fee structures for different type of learners. Either there's a learner, there's a fee associated with your activities, which you of course may waive for some types of learners, or there's not. So I would indicate for those activities where you have a different fee structure to say that there is one, and then work with many of your internal learners to ensure that they know those fees are waived for that audience.
>>MARTIN: Okay, great. Graham, Norma, Ed, thank you all very much for your input. ABP and ABA staff, we appreciate your input as well. So to those of you on the line, what are your next steps? Well, first we would encourage you to go ahead and review all of the requirements, to take a look at them, to determine if you have upcoming activities that qualify, that would meet the requirements for your learners to also receive MOC points. If not, take a look at how you can engage and plan in the MOC process and benefit your learners, what activities you might have that can be transformed or can be updated to meet the expectations of the board. And then go ahead and enter those activities into PARS, and register them for MOC points. And then just to repeat, timeliness is a really important factor that we want you to consider, and many of you upload your activities on March 30th because they're due on March 31st, but when you're registering activities for MOC points, be considerate of the diplomate and make sure that you're entering those at least in a timely fashion, and entering participant data, so that they can get credit for their requirements with the board end of year reporting, etcetera.
And somebody had asked, so it is possible to go ahead and enter those, maybe on a one to one basis, and then batch upload the rest of your activities at the end of the year, but just keep that in mind as you're entering and registering activities in PARS and entering participant data so that diplomats can claim that. So, thank you all very much. Again, just to reiterate real quick what Graham said and what I mentioned earlier. If we didn't get to your question, you can feel free to email back to info@accme.org, and the ACCME staff will go ahead and respond to the rest of those questions. Thank you so much for your time, we look forward to engaging with you and we look forward to seeing those activities registered for pediatrics and anesthesia, present themselves in PARS in the near future. Thank you all very much for your time. Bye-bye.
