CMEpalooza’s Ask Us Anything: Take 1

Hey there 2025 – nice to meet you. Be kind to everyone, please.

In the vein of comradery and community, we’re rolling out the 2025 CMEpalooza blog with one of our new features that we announced last month called “Ask Us Anything.” If you recall, this is your chance to get “expert” advice from Derek and I about whatever is on your mind. I know that people were initially reticent to write about their current issues until they saw the quality of advice that we were going to give, but we did get a few interesting submissions that we’ll address here and now.

If you have an issue you want us to help with, you can go here to submit your question(s)

Dear Derek and Scott,

I am in academia and nursing, and I need to understand other academic settings (outside of medicine) and how programming is supported. Are provider units self-sustaining or part of the school’s business functionality? I need to understand different business models on how academic centers are producing lovely programming, and I am sitting here struggling without a budget to develop enduring programs, obtaining instructional designers, paying speakers, etc. Any help or references to other members would be great!

Warmly,

It’s Not So Academic

DEREK: Given that 2025 will be my [checks notes] 25th(!) year working in CME/CE, I’ve had the opportunity to work for a number of different provider types, including twice in academia. Of those two academic CME providers, one was almost entirely self-funded and the other was a mix of institutionally and self-funded. In talking with a number of other academic providers, it appears of them fall into one of those two categories, with very few being 100% institutionally funded.

I won’t sit here and tell you that I am an expert on business models for academic centers. It’s a tough business, and I definitely remember muttering some words that would make my mother blush every time the “Dean’s tax” would cut out a portion of the already meager funds we were able to bring in. From my experience during this time, there were two tactics that helped us balance the budget:

1. Utilizing internal resources. One of the advantages of working at an academic center is that there may already be staff members in other departments that you can tap into for help. An academic center is no different than any other large organization in that so often the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing. Did you know the Health Policy department has a full-time instructional designer on staff? Did you know the Office of Information Technology has a couple interns available to help with digital content? You might be surprised what is already available within your own organization.
2. Some academic providers bring in additional income by partnering with outside organizations (MEC’s, medical societies, etc.) to develop programs. This can be a convenient way to help fund internal programs without the workload of taking on all aspects of program development.

Lastly, if anyone reading this has any additional suggestions or recommendations, please feel free to add them in the comments section below.

SCOTT: Since I have no personal experience working in an academic center (although I have partnered with academic centers on numerous occasions), I’ll only add that you will find our CME community to be extraordinarily friendly and willing to offer advice. If you are a member of the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions, you could search their member directory for other providers in your geographic area and perhaps reach out to connect with someone whose professional demographic seems similar to yours. Another option is to connect with someone in the Alliance’s Hospital and Health System member section (one of their current co-chairs is a former CMEpalooza intern) to see if they might have someone they could suggest you chat with.

Being creative in finding low (or no) cost solutions is a skill at a premium in our industry. There are ways to create quality education on a shoestring budget — it just isn’t necessarily as easy as when you have lots of dollars to throw around.

Dear Derek and Scott,

CE professionals are increasingly examining practice habits via claims data. This presents a new window through which CE planners can evaluate how well educational interventions are potentially addressing healthcare/practice gaps. However, access to this data in my limited experience is either sparce or very expensive. Can you identify or recommend avenues for collecting and analyzing claims data (ideally before and) following education delivery?

Fondly,

ClaimQuesting Coder

SCOTT: Ah, claims data. The holy grail of outcomes analysis. Look, we all understand the rationale – we want a more definitive way to objectively demonstrate that our education is (or isn’t) impacting how healthcare professionals operate on a day-to-day basis. Relying on self-reported intent to change is fine, but we all know that our learners aren’t exactly spending hours thinking about this and may or may not follow through on their intent. Logically, an analysis of claims data from our learners would be a great, nonintrusive way of measuring the impact of our education.

However, you are right to note that this is neither easy nor cheap. Healthcare systems don’t exactly willingly allow anyone to access their data willy nilly. While there are certain metrics they are required to report to broad databases, this really doesn’t help us much. What we need is to dive into specific points of information from our learners (and perhaps a control group of non-learners) that are directly tied to the education that we delivered. Not easy and not cheap.

Whenever an organization approaches me and says, “We have access to a claims database that will give you great data on your programs, and it’s only $25,000 extra per activity,” my first question to them is always, “What claims database are you talking about?” Usually, the answer I get is, “It’s proprietary,” which means that they won’t (or can’t) tell me, which means that my Spidey sense goes on full alert and I run away. Quickly.

The limited success I have had with claims databases recently involved working directly with regional Health Information Exchanges that have access to provider data across multiple healthcare systems in their area. But again, neither easy nor cheap, and you really need to think carefully about what you want to measure and assess to determine whether you have realistic expectations.

DEREK: I am going to take the easy way out here and state that I don’t have much to add beyond what Scott has already shared. The one comment I’ll make is that my experience over the past few years with using claims data for both targeted distribution and outcomes analysis has been positive. I agree with Scott that you should give careful consideration to the type and goal of your program, but overall, I think the value derived from claims data is worth the cost. My dad always told me that you get what you pay for, and I would argue that is the case with claims data.

Dear Derek and Scott,

Hi! There is a, well, I’m not sure what to call it but let’s just say it’s a sort of blog that rolls up into an event and back out again. The content is no longer core to my professional role, so I could/should just unsubscribe and move on, making space for something more directly relevant, but the people who run it are entertaining and clever, bordering on funny, which makes me hesitant to pull the plug. What should I do?

Hugs and Kisses,

Entertained but Unsure

DEREK: This is an easy one. All you need to do is quit your current role and find a new job that is more relevant to the content of your favorite blog. Problem solved!

In return, perhaps the people who run the blog can work on moving it from “bordering on funny” to “actually, kind of funny.” I recommend they include more jokes about their favorite sports teams, 80’s trivia, and Top 5 lists. Also, more cat videos. You can never go wrong with more cat videos.

SCOTT: I am fairly sure that cat videos stopped being trendy about the same time as Despacito disappeared from your radio dial. Please try to keep up with the rest of the world, Derek. Our friend here seems to be in dire straits, and I get it.

On the one hand, we only have so many hours in our working day to devote to nonessential content, and there are so many time sucks waiting to, well, suck our time away. On the other hand, if the two people who run this supposed blog are so entertaining and clever, I would be hesitant about pulling the plug on them. Qualities like this are in short supply these days.

The solution is rather simple — substitute those 10 minutes you usually devote to making your morning cup of coffee and instead devote them to mental caffeine by ingesting your favorite, wittiest, most debonair blog. That way, you aren’t sacrificing any of that crucial time you need on your job, but you also are living a more enjoyable life.

Remember, if you have an issue you want us to help with next time (any issue), you can go here to submit your question(s)