Purpose

North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System (NS-LIJHS) is a leading not-for-profit provider of quality medical care. The continuing medical education (CME) provided to members of its medical staffs, physicians in the region and other physicians throughout the United States and the world, who partake of that education, is a fundamental asset to the maintenance of quality and patient safety.

NS-LIJHS’s CME program exists to improve physician competency, enhance performance-in-practice and the outcomes of patient care. As such, the CME Program encompasses a broad and comprehensive range of topics based on the identified gaps in the needs of the physician communities it serves.  As a system of care, emphasis is placed on the identification of areas for improvement through the system’s Quality Improvement Department, for which CME is a change-agent.

The outcomes of the educational process inform the overall improvement to the program on a continuous basis.

Content

The content of the NS-LIJ CME program includes a broad range of primary care and specialty topics that are determined through a comprehensive needs assessment process. The needs assessment process determines gaps in knowledge or performance, which are defined as the difference between current practice and best practice. As a major teaching institution, such topics are derived from the
needs of learners, experts, national guidelines and observed quality indicators
within the health system.

Educational Audiences

Learners that utilize the NS-LIJ CME program include the following:

• Local audiences comprised of physicians from the system’s affiliated hospitals
• Other physicians in the Long Island and Greater Metropolitan New York City region
• Physicians from the United States and other countries in the world.
• Health Care Professionals as part of a multidisciplinary team.

Types of Activities

NS-LIJ offers a variety of CME activities, including the following:

• Regularly Scheduled Conferences (RSC)—A large number of RSCs are offered throughout the health system and to other hospitals within the community
• Live Conferences and Workshops—Both directly sponsored and jointly sponsored activities are offered to physicians affiliated with the health system, and to physicians from the United States and other countries of the world.
• Internet-Based Education—Predominantly enduring web-based education is offered for activities that target a large, diverse and geographically distant audience.
• Enduring Materials—Print and electronic enduring materials are also offered to learners.
• Teleconferencing -Learning methods are selected based on the identified needs and type of intervention planned.  While all activities have interactive, case-based processes, the planners’ understanding of the learning environment associated with targeted audience determines the overall educational design.

Expected Results

As a result of their involvement in the CME program, learners will demonstrate changes in competence, improvement in performance-in-practice and/or improved patient outcomes. Metrics for determination of success include the following:

• For changes in competence, outcomes assessments will determine that knowledge was gained, and/or confidence increased, and that a strategy was present for using the knowledge gained
• For improvements in performance-in-practice, outcome assessments will show that physicians implemented new behaviors in their practice that were intended as results of the educational activity
• For improvements in patient outcomes, assessments will indicate closure of the identified gap in quality, safety, or other indicator as identified in the gap analysis