Continuing Medical Education Program earns highest national reaccreditation

The UC Davis Health Office of Continuing Medical Education (CME) received prestigious recognition for courses it offers to thousands of UC Davis health care and regional professionals each year. It recently earned top marks with a flawless six-year reaccreditation for its exceptional training and education programs.

The national Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education awarded the CME office “Accreditation with Commendation." The distinguished designation is a key indicator of the program’s value, organization and excellence, and represents the highest possible level of achievement.

“Obtaining quality continuing medical education during a time when health care is changing rapidly is critical,” said Susan Murin, Interim Dean of the School of Medicine. “Especially during the pandemic, the value CME brings to our medical community and our affiliates made this reaccreditation more important than ever. For the past several years, we’ve focused on continuous program improvement so that CME learners are better positioned to lead change within their own care teams.”

CME reaccreditation is an extremely rigorous process requiring in-depth surveyor examination of six years of retrospective documentation, interviews and observations. The CME office had to demonstrate adherence to 35 standards and criteria, including metrics showing how CME courses are integrated into the process for improving patient outcomes, and how the program fosters educational strategies to remove, overcome or address barriers to physician change. 

The CME office has made some significant programmatic changes and improvements, which also contributed to its most recent achievement. 

“Leading change with our educators to make CME more accessible and learner-centric while working closely with our own Quality Improvement Office on key initiatives has been extremely beneficial,” said Sandhya Venugopal, Associate Dean of Continuing Medical Education. “Timely access to education, process improvement and patient safety is imperative at all times, not only for UC Davis Health, but also for our clinical colleagues across the region. CME that incorporates these areas is essential, particularly during a pandemic. Health care professionals look to UC Davis’ CME program for educational excellence. We’re looking forward to building on this success and continuing our focus on educational evaluation for improved patient outcomes.”

Accredited CME programs like UC Davis Health’s are designed to offer educational activities that address the real-world practice needs of clinicians, whether in clinical care, research, health care administration, or other areas of medicine. Among the criteria for reaccreditation was an assessment of the CME program’s effectiveness in meeting national CME standards and goals. The variety of courses UC Davis Health’s CME program offers and its commitment to educational excellence for creating and delivering coursework that meets the needs of the organization and region continues to attract thousands of learners annually.