APPNA offers live CME activities, including courses, conferences, and workshops. APPNA’s long-standing commitment to offering quality continuing medical education for physicians and healthcare professionals supports our mission to optimize patient care. To this end, our programs are designed to engage learners in interactive learning sessions; provide the most up-to-date information and strategies; and develop or enhance skills that may be applied in clinical practice, research, or teaching.
Purpose and Mission
The mission of the APPNA Office of Continuing Medical Education is to assist practicing physicians, advanced practice providers, and other health care professionals with educational activities to enhance their knowledge and skills in the subject area(s) offered, and apply the knowledge and skills to improve performance and patient outcomes in their practice settings.
The purpose of the APPNA Office of CME is to collaborate with APPNA members to identify educational needs and to design, implement, evaluate and document educational conferences and initiatives. APPNA CME’s core services include:
• Certifying learning activities for physicians that meet Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) Essentials, Criteria and Standards for Commercial Support.
• Tracking credit for physicians and other healthcare providers who attend APPNA CME-certified activities.
The content areas are inclusive of all areas of contemporary primary and specialty practice including leadership and management skills. Content is presented when it is appropriate to physicians and other healthcare professionals and of benefit to patients or to the public health.
The target audience includes practicing physicians, advanced practice providers, and other healthcare professionals of APPNA’s membership and, when appropriate, a national and international audience of these healthcare professionals.
The types of activities include: regional, national, international symposia and conferences. The scope of these activities involves the body of knowledge and skills generally recognized and accepted by the profession as within the basic medical sciences, the discipline of clinical medicine, and the provision of healthcare to the public.
The expected results are to:
Revised and approved January 2016
Policies & Procedures
APPNA CME Policy
Guidance for the development and implementation of CME activities.
APPNA CME Conflict of Interest Policy & Procedure
Guidance for the identification, management, and resolution of potential conflicts of interest for CME activities.
APPNA CME Policy On Honoraria and Reimbursement Expenses
CME Guidelines Related to Honoraria and Reimburement for Lecturers, Moderators, Staff and other faculty.
Claiming CME Credits
Claiming CME Credits
Developing a CME Presentation
The following information is intended to be useful to you and help you avoid any issues when developing slides or handout materials for your CME presentation.
Apply for CME
Resources
Frequently Asked Questions
Continuing Medical Education (CME) is defined as “educational activities that serve to maintain, develop, or increase the knowledge, skills, and professional performance and relationships that a physician uses to provide services for patients, the public, or the profession” (source: ACCME and AMA).
ACCME is the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education and is the organization that sets the standards for the accreditation of all providers of CME activities.
The American Medical Association helps doctors help patients by uniting physicians nationwide to work on the most important professional and public health issues.
Although not limited to; APPNA mainly qualifies educational activities for CME certification that are lectures and/or meetings in which learners are physically present.
According to the American Medical Association, Category 1 CME activities are:♦ Formally planned activities that include documentation of acceptable needs assessment, learning objectives, educational design, an evaluation method, and disclosure.
♦ Planned and implemented in full compliance with the ACCME Standards for Commercial Support.
♦ Prospectively certified for credit by an ACCME-accredited CME Provider.Category 2 “self claim” credits are:♦ Informally planned physician-initiated activities such as practice-based self-study, consultations with colleagues, teaching, M&M conferences, journal clubs, etc.
♦ APPNA is not involved with planning, certifying, or tracking Category 2 activities.
Contact the APPNA Office of CME at (630) 968-8585 or cme@appna.org to discuss your activity. See also the Steps for Certifying CME Activity page.
AMA PRA Category 1 CreditTM is the most common type of credit physicians need for medical license maintenance. In order for an activity to be designated for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit, it must be planned by an accredited CME provider.
Contact the APPNA Office of CME at (630) 968-8585 or cme@appna.org to discuss your activity. See also the Steps for Certifying CME Activity page.
Direct Sponsorship: A CME activity that APPNA CME develops and implements internally for its own membership.
Jointly Sponsorship: A CME activity that is developed and implemented by two institutions or organizations and only one of the institutions or organizations is accredited by the ACCME. The accredited provider (e.g., APPNA) must take responsibility for a CME activity when it is presented in cooperation with a non-accredited institution or organization. A commercial interest cannot take the role of non-accredited entity in a joint sponsorship relationship (Source: ACCME).
Co-sponsorship: A CME activity presented by two or more accredited providers. One institution must take responsibility for the activity.
The ACCME requires CME providers to require everyone who is in a position to control the content of an educational activity to disclose all relevant financial relationships with any commercial interest(s) in order to prevent potential bias in the educational content.
No, pharmaceutical sales representatives or representatives of medical product/device manufacturers cannot pay directly for the food. However, they can provide an educational grant to APPNA in support of the food costs (see ACCME Standard 3).
No, the ACCME Standards for Commercial Support require that all support from commercial interests be provided to the accredited CME provider in the form of an educational grant (see ACCME Standards 3.8 and 3.9).
No, it is up to the Activity CME Chair to select appropriate topics and speakers for their CME activity based upon the target audience’s educational needs. The Activity CME Chair can request a Speaker List from a pharmaceutical representative and then select an appropriate speaker and topic from the list. The Activity CME Chair should then communicate with the chosen speaker and delineate the learning objectives he/she would like the speaker to address (see ACCME Standard 1.1).
In response to growing concerns about keeping health information private, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The legislation includes a privacy rule that creates national standards to protect individuals’ personal health information. Patient authorization must be obtained OR information de-identified. The items considered to be identifiers by the federal government and therefore to be removed are extensive—basically anything that could tie the medical information to an individual—including, but not limited to name, address, social security and medical record number, picture of face, any date associated with the individual (admission, discharge, birth, death), and implanted device serial numbers. WHENEVER POSSIBLE, DE-IDENTIFY INFORMATION TO BE PRESENTED AT CONFERENCES. For additional information, visit http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa.
Currently, we are charging late fees surcharge from doctors who have a Permanent /Full license that has expired. Any doctor who had a provisional license from PMDC can get a permanent license first time without any late payment surcharge after fulfilling the requisite criteria for a permanent license.
Yes, payment can be made online in PMC bank account as mentioned on the website. The application & the financial transaction details can be emailed to licensing@pmc.gov.pk . We are in the process of launching our online portal where all doctors can register & process the application themselves along with the payment. We hope to start this facility soon.
Yes, as above.
We want all doctors who want to indulge in clinical practice to have a valid license first. There is a policy coming in effect soon wherein any doctor can voluntarily hold his valid license on an application form or reactivate it when required. The license should be active to hold it for a certain period of time. Detailed SOPs to this effect will be on the website soon.
Yes as is being done by all local & overseas doctors. We will request our worthy President to give an extension to all overseas doctors in late payment surcharge deadline as per old rates till 30 April. Currently deadline for old rates late payment surcharge is 31 March 2021.
Yes, there is an additional fee of Rs. 4000/- for overseas courier service. If fees is paid along with proper address & cell number, it can be delivered to that address.
Normally it takes 2-3 weeks in confirming the overseas financial transactions due too certain restrictions on payments from abroad. In some cases we have seen transactions being returned back to sender & we don’t get timely information. After confirming the transaction, we take a maximum of 7-10 working days in processing the renewal license.
Yes, there is a separate form & fee for that mentioned on the website.
YES
At present it is 31 March, but I would request the President PMC to give an extension specially to overseas Pakistani Doctors till 30 April, if possible.
