Overcoming Challenges to Achieve Higher Engagement and Satisfaction from Regional CME Meetings

Continuing Medical Education (CME) programs are increasingly targeting education around regional disease burdens, such as diabetes in the South, Sickle Cell disease in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, or Lyme disease in the Northeast. This offers the benefit of a continuing education opportunity that is more accessible and relevant for healthcare professionals (HCPs), with direct impact on the communities in which they serve. However, organizing these regional programs can pose unique challenges. Available technology can vary from region to region, as can internet quality and speed. There are also differences across states’ accreditation requirements, as well as the expectations and needs of the local healthcare professionals for whom the program is developed. Overcoming these challenges will require coordination with local stakeholders as well as partnerships with vendors who can offer consistency regardless of the locale.

Regional Technology Challenges

In contrast to large meetings typically held in urban, resource-rich areas, it may be more difficult to find a venue with an adequate technology infrastructure for the expected number of attendees. Rather than trying to combine the venue with technology services, providers should look for a partner who can provide the desired meeting and engagement solution as well as traditional audiovisual technology. This will give you a single, reliable point of contact at the tech table. To safeguard the meeting from a potentially sporadic or unsecure internet connection, also make sure your tech partner offers a secure private local network to keep the content flowing.

Content Needs

Centrally located CME programs rely on faculty who not only have the necessary subject-matter knowledge and credentials, but also the respect and notoriety to attract HCPs to the symposium. For regional meetings, it’s important to deliver lectures and workshops that reflect local epidemiology, guidelines, and practice patterns. This may require additional research and tailoring by providers, but will bring greater value to attendees with a higher likelihood of learnings being retained and used in practice. When possible, recruit regional subject matter experts and ensure presentations are evidence-based and unbiased.

Audience Engagement

While attendees share geography and interest in the same disease burden, they may come from very different specialties and practice settings. In regions with diverse populations, HCPs may also speak many languages.

It’s important to consider the various attendee demographics, needs, and interests to enable the creation of meaningful content. Knowledge and retention are improved when personalized learning is enabled using dynamic engagement strategies that encourage everyone to interact with the speakers and content. This could include using managed iPads to allow each participant direct access to presentations and additional resource materials. Additionally, providing the ability to annotate and save slides enables learners to reinforce their own learning, while an always-on question-and-answer option lets them quickly dispel misunderstandings for better mastery of the subject.

If there are diverse native languages in the room, live interpretation (such as via the managed iPads) can ensure everyone hears the presentations in the language they’ll best understand.

Accreditation Compliance

Since CME credits must align with both national and state regulatory bodies, it can be challenging when national requirements differ significantly from those of the state where the meeting is being held. Working with a technology provider who can offer a seamless and inviting way for attendees to interact with surveys and evaluations helps providers generate the documentation needed to satisfy all parties and have credit issued.

Assessing Future Needs

Analyzing insights from a large CME symposium with attendees representing diverse demographics can shed light on topics that could use reinforcement, as well as on new subjects HCPs would be interested in learning more about. Since regional meetings have a very selective focus, it may seem that there is less opportunity to gather data that can inform future needs assessments. However, these meetings can also benefit from strategic deployment of engagement technology that gathers data down to the individual level. By gathering contextual information such as years in practice, role, and specialty, providers can analyze needs and disparities within the region. There may be more learning needed or desired around the disease state among HCPs with a certain level of experience or an ability to drill down further for specialists. This analysis could also uncover a new, prevalent concern among the region’s HCPs.

Additionally, the inclusion of confidence-based assessment within regional programs can help uncover knowledge gaps by revealing which attendees truly understand the topic and are ready to incorporate it in practice, and who are not. This can point to the need for a follow-up symposium for those who are misinformed.

Greater Access, Satisfaction, and Outcomes

Regional CME meetings address a preference among HCPs for continuing education with less travel, cost, and time commitments. In fact, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) has acknowledged and endorsed the value of democratizing access through such locally focused programs. Annual reports and stakeholder surveys from ACCME also consistently demonstrate higher satisfaction scores for locally tailored CME activities, and peer-reviewed literature supports regional meetings’ ability to generate more meaningful experiences and learning outcomes for attendees.

In an effort to deliver education in a locally relevant way, CME providers may find themselves with fewer options for necessary resources. The partners they work with will have to fill critical needs seamlessly and reliably to overcome these challenges. There is a particular need for technology partners capable of delivering secure, reliable content and engagement solutions regardless of the location.

WCG Array can develop and execute an audience engagement strategy that enables CME providers to realize more interaction, improved knowledge gain and retention, and deep insights into ROI, best practices, and future needs. Reach out to learn more.