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A working guidebook

ACCME, in plain words

What a CME coordinator needs to know to keep an activity file clean, without reading the accreditation PDF first. The official text still lives at accme.org.

ACCME is the US accreditor for continuing medical education. The public story is that physicians need credits. The working story, the one your office is paid for, is that accredited education is a documented path from a practice gap to a change you can defend: independent of industry, tied to evidence, and sitting in a file a surveyor can open.

This page translates that system into Tuesday language. It is a map. It is not legal, compliance, or accreditation advice, and it is not a substitute for the current requirements. When a wording decision matters, open the linked ACCME page and use their words.

A manila folder, index cards, worksheet and pencil laid out as a simple activity file.
Surveyors ask for the file. The rest of this page is what belongs in it, and why.

Who ACCME is

The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education accredits organizations, not individual activities. Your hospital, school, society, or company is the provider. The grand rounds session on Thursday is an activity of that provider. Learners get credit because the provider is accredited, and because this activity was planned under the rules.

Not every office is accredited directly by ACCME. Many hospital programs are accredited by a state medical society that ACCME recognizes. Some offices are jointly accredited, which lets one team award credit across professions (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, PAs, and others) as interprofessional continuing education. The Standards for Integrity and Independence are shared across those systems. The portal you type numbers into may be PARS or JA-PARS. The Tuesday jobs are the same.

An ineligible company (a company whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients) cannot be an accredited provider. That line is the firewall between education and promotion.

What you are actually producing

You are not producing a conference. You are producing an activity file: the packet that proves this education was planned, independent, and evaluated. A surveyor who asks for one activity is asking for this packet, not for a slide deck.

For one activity, the file usually has to show:

  • The practice gap, and the evidence you used to see it.
  • The educational need (knowledge, competence, or performance) underneath that gap.
  • Objectives tied to the gap, for this format and this length.
  • Who controlled content, their disclosures, how relevant relationships were mitigated, and what learners were told, before the education.
  • The materials as presented, or a record of them.
  • Evaluation and whatever outcome you actually measured.
  • If AI generated, modified, or analyzed educational content: which tool, for what, who reviewed it, and when.

RSS (grand rounds, tumor boards, M&M) still needs a file. The series has a standing gap. Each session still needs a topic, a disclosure check, and a record. That is why RSS is where hospital files often fail, and why there is a weekly packet recipe and a session-file checklist.

The planning cycle

Almost every accredited activity follows a version of this. If a step is missing, the file has a hole, even if the room was full.

Practice gap

Current state versus desired state, with evidence: chart review, QI data, guidelines, a survey, last year's evaluations. A topic is not a gap. "We should do something on heart failure" is a topic.

Educational need

Why the gap exists. They do not know, they cannot show how, or they are not doing it in practice. ACCME cares which of those you claimed, because it decides what you later measure.

Objectives

Measurable, tied to the gap, sized to the format. A 50-minute RSS session does not get seven objectives. The needs-to-objectives recipe is this step with a prompt attached.

Design

Format, faculty, interactivity, assessment. A lecture is allowed. A lecture that pretends it will change performance, with no practice and no follow-up, is a claim problem.

Independence

Identify, mitigate, and disclose relevant financial relationships. Keep ineligible companies out of content control. This is Standard 3, and it is not optional paperwork.

Delivery

Live course, RSS, enduring material, journal CE, and the rest. The format has to match the objective. Credit language on the announcement has to be yours, not a model's.

Evaluation and outcomes

Measure what you designed for. Moore's levels, below. Then file what you actually got, including the unflattering parts.

Reporting

PARS or JA-PARS, certificates, board reporting if you do it, and the self-study when reaccreditation comes. The program-analysis recipe drafts prose from counts you already exported. It does not talk to PARS.

Core criteria, as jobs

ACCME groups the core accreditation criteria into two clusters. You need all of them for ordinary accreditation (a four-year term; two years if you are a first-time applicant). The names below are ACCME's. The Tuesday column is ours. Confirm current wording on accme.org/rules/criteria before a self-study sentence.

Mission and program improvement

Criterion What it means on a Tuesday
Mission You have a written purpose, and it talks about changing competence, performance, or patient outcomes, not about putting on events.
Program analysis Once a year you look at the whole program, with numbers, and say whether you met that purpose. Including where you did not.
Program improvements You change something because of that look: faculty, format, staffing, follow-up. A paragraph that says "we will continue to strive" is not an improvement.

Educational planning and evaluation

Criterion What it means on a Tuesday
Educational needs Each activity starts from a practice gap in your learners, and names whether the hole is knowledge, competence, or performance.
Designed to change The activity is built to move the thing your mission named, not merely to occupy an hour.
Appropriate formats The format fits the objective. Skills need practice. Awareness can be a lecture.
Competencies You can say which physician (or team) attributes this was for, in a recognized framework, not only "it was about cardiology."
Analyzes change Across the program, you look at whether learners actually moved on competence, performance, or patient outcomes, and you do not promote a smile sheet into a higher level.

The five Standards

The Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education replaced the old Standards for Commercial Support. They took effect 1 January 2022. Several other health-profession accreditors adopted the same set, which is why a jointly accredited office does not run two independence systems.

The point, in one line: learners should be able to trust that accredited education is not a sales call.

Standard 1. Ensure content is valid

Recommendations have to be evidence-based, balanced, and scientifically justified. Faculty opinion is allowed. Faculty opinion dressed up as the only reasonable practice, with no mention of alternatives or limits, is how this fails. A named clinician still owns clinical validity. A drafting tool does not.

Standard 2. Prevent commercial bias and marketing

Accredited CE is not a place for product promotion, company logos as decoration, or a case whose only right answer is one brand. The commercial-bias screen is this standard as a prompt: you supply the outline, the tool flags language, a person decides.

Standard 3. Identify, mitigate, and disclose relevant financial relationships

Everyone in a position to control content discloses. You decide what is relevant to this content. Relevant relationships are mitigated before that person controls content. Learners are told before the education. Disclosure to learners is required. Disclosure is not mitigation.

Do not paste completed disclosure forms into an unapproved AI tool. Process status ("form outstanding") or an approved summary. The disclosure-chase recipe is built around that stop.

Standard 4. Manage commercial support appropriately

If an ineligible company gives money or in-kind support, there is a written agreement, the supporter does not control content, and learners are told. Most activities take no commercial support. When yours does, the file has to prove the content was not for sale. Never let a supporter's RFP become your practice gap. The IME narrative recipe exists for that failure mode.

Standard 5. Manage ancillary activities

Exhibits, ads, and other non-accredited add-ons can exist. They cannot be mixed into the accredited education so a learner cannot tell which is which. The satellite symposium in the next room is not your grand rounds, and the slides should not pretend otherwise.

Moore's levels

Donald Moore and colleagues published the pyramid CME offices still use. "We measured level 4" is a complete sentence in this field. The mistake is treating the numbers as a scoreboard rather than as a design choice: pick the level the activity can actually move, then measure that.

Level Name What you can show
1 Participation Who showed up or completed it.
2 Satisfaction Whether they liked it. The smile sheet.
3 Knowledge They can state it (declarative) or describe how (procedural).
4 Competence They can show how, in an educational setting: a case, a skills station, a vignette.
5 Performance They do it in practice. Chart audit, order data, observed behavior at work.
6 Patient health Patients got better on something you can point to.
7 Community health The community or population got better.

ACCME's 2025 Data Report found that most activities measure competence (95 percent), fewer measure performance (39 percent) or patient health (12 percent), and most of those higher measures are still self-report. Self-reported intent is not performance. The outcomes-report recipe and the number audit exist so a fluent paragraph cannot promote a level 2 form into a level 5 claim.

RSS: the hospital week

Regularly scheduled series are one accreditation file covering many sessions: grand rounds, tumor boards, M&M. Hospitals are the largest provider type in the ACCME system. RSS is a small share of activity counts and a large share of hospital learner interactions. That is the modal Tuesday.

The series has a standing gap. This week's talk still has to address it. If it does not, do not invent an objective that makes a stray lecture look planned. File it as non-accredited, or get the topic aligned, before you write the announcement.

Each session still needs a disclosure check, a record, and evaluation that belongs to that hour. The weekly RSS packet drafts the announcement, the disclosure reminder, one session objective, and three eval questions from facts you already have. Clip the session-file checklist to the folder.

PARS and the year-end numbers

PARS is where accredited providers enter activity, learner, and program data. Jointly accredited providers use JA-PARS. The annual ACCME Data Report is the aggregate of what everyone submitted. Your year-end close is a small piece of that.

The official five steps, videos, and checklist live on ACCME's annual reporting page. Confirm this year's deadline there. State-accredited providers may finish earlier. The last published ACCME deadline, for 2025 data, was 31 March 2026 at 11:59 pm Central Time. That cycle is closed. ACCME's own annual-reporting page may still show last cycle's date well into the year. Treat that as last year's close, not this year's.

Export the counts. Then write. Do not ask a tool to remember last year's learner interactions, or to close an academic-year series in December. The PARS annual-close companion is the checking half. The close recipe turns an export into a punch list. The program-analysis recipe turns the same export into self-study prose, with a hard stop on trends you did not measure.

Enduring materials

On-demand education: no fixed time or place. About 44 percent of activities in the 2025 Data Report, and about two thirds of learner interactions. Review at least every three years, sooner if the science moved. Original release, last review, and termination dates go on the material. In PARS, one record for the life of that version, up to three years. Renewal is a new activity. Learners are people whose participation you can verify, not downloads. Credit is time to complete.

The enduring-module recipe outlines the thing from a gap you already have. You supply the medicine. Confirm the dates on ACCME's definition and the content-validity rule .

Joint providership

An accredited organization presents an activity with a nonaccredited one. It is not a legal partnership. The accredited provider owns compliance, the file, operations and refunds, and the response if ACCME asks. Ineligible companies cannot jointly provide. Providers on Probation cannot start new joint providership. Copy the required accreditation statement from the rule. Do not invent it.

The walk-through is the split as a planning memo. A consultant opening the folder later uses the activity-file audit.

AI in 2026

ACCME published guidance on AI on 30 January 2026, and an alert on learner-facing AI on 14 April 2026. Confirm both before a compliance decision. In working language:

  • You are still the author of record. A model can draft. A named person checks facts, bias, and identifiers, and signs.
  • Disclose substantive use in educational content: tool, version or date, purpose, named reviewer, and whether prompts were stored outside your organization. Grammar and spellcheck do not count. Internal drafts that never reach learners do not count. The disclosure log is the surveyor-visible version of that sentence.
  • Do not put unpublished faculty material or disclosure forms into an unapproved tool. Permission first for unpublished slides. Process status only for COI until your organization says otherwise.
  • Do not put an ungoverned chatbot in front of learners. Chat tutors, virtual patients, anything that generates live answers inside an activity: the provider owns every output. If you cannot validate, monitor, keep promotion out, and name a clinician who can stop it, do not offer it. Details are on Guardrails.

Commendation, briefly

Ordinary accreditation is four years (two if you are new). Accreditation with Commendation is a six-year term, and it is optional. You still have to meet every core criterion, the Standards, and applicable policies. On top of that you pick eight items from ACCME's commendation menu, including at least one from the Achieves Outcomes group (performance, healthcare quality, or patient or community health).

The menu has five categories: team-based education, public health priorities, enhancing skills, educational leadership, and achieving outcomes. Do not quote a criterion number from memory in a self-study. Open the current menu. Attendance and smile sheets will not get you there, and a drafting tool will happily assume you already did.

Where the actual rules live

Use this page to find the job. Use these for the wording that goes in the file:

The handbook's sources page lists these alongside privacy and product sources. The glossary defines the working words. If you are putting AI on this work tomorrow, start with Guardrails and the disclosure log, then pick the recipe that matches the task on your desk. If you want the three files for your role, start from your desk.

ACCME, in plain words · bettermethod.ai/accme/ · Last reviewed August 2026
These tools change often. Check the review date before you rely on anything product-specific in here, and check the guidance against your own accreditor and organization policies.