Questions:
- What services do you provide and what are your fees?
- What types of educational activities and formats do you sponsor?
- What requirements must I meet for my event to be approved as a regularly scheduled series?
- When should I send my application to you?
- What if I want to renew an activity that you have sponsored previously?
- How can I send my required materials to you?
- What is the difference between a directly sponsored and a jointly sponsored activity?
- How do you deal with educational activity supporters such as drug and device companies?
- How do you deal with educational supporters that are not commercial interests?
- Why do I need to supply practice gap, needs assessment, and learning objective information?
- What information will I need to send to you?
- How long do you keep your records?
- Can I issue a duplicate CME certificate of participation upon request?
- What is your tax status? Are you a 501(c)(3) organization?
- What Services do you provide and what are your fees?
We provide AMA PRA Category 1 CME CreditTM sponsorship for appropriate educational activities. We also provide a discounted rate for the use of a commercial online meeting hosting service (Eventbrite), but we do not offer conference management services. Our sponsorship fees are based on the type and size of the activity and whether you are a College of Medicine department or an outside organization (a joint provider).
We provide CME sponsorship for live activities, such as conferences, webinars, and regularly scheduled series (such as grand rounds), for enduring materials (such as Internet or CD-ROM based programs), and for journal-based CME.
The ACCME defines a regularly scheduled series (RSS) as an activity that is planned as a series with multiple, ongoing sessions (e.g., sessions that are offered weekly, monthly, or quarterly), and that is primarily planned by and presented to the accredited organization's professional staff. Examples include grand rounds, tumor boards, and morbidity and mortality conferences. The UA CME office must make available and accessible to the learners a system through which data and information on a learner's participation can be recorded and retrieved. Meaning, upon request, we must be able to provide your physicians with a CME transcript of their attendance at UA-sponsored RSS events. Therefore, activities that are not reqularly scheduled and occur at least once each quarter will not be approved as RSS activities. Similarly, if the majority of attendees at your event are not members of your professional staff, your event may not be approved as an RSS activity.
Please send your application to us at least 60 days before you need CME credit approval. You must use our "New Activity Proposal Form" located on our Fees and Forms page. If you wish to market your program and advertise that it offers CME credit, we will need your application 60 days before you plan to begin marketing. We can sometimes process applications that are sent 30-60 days before approval is needed, but these applications are handled on a case-by-case basis and will incur a rush fee. Please do not send sponsorship applications to us with less than 30 days for review.
We can consider ongoing activities, such as Regularly Scheduled Series and Enduring Materials, for CME sponsorship renewal using a shortened Sponsorship Renewal Application, available on the Fees and Forms page. In specific circumstances (contact us) this form may be used for multiple event-based live activities. Renewal fees are noted on our Fee Schedule (Fees and Forms page). If not specifically designated, our renewal fees are the same as the inital application fees. Sponsorship renewal will be based on timely completion of an application and compliance with our sponsorship requirements during the previous period.
We request that you send all application materials electronically, preferably as e-mail attachments, to uofacme@email.arizona.edu. If you must send some documents by hard copy, please send them to CME Office, University of Arizona, PO Box 245121, Tucson, AZ 85724-5121. If you want to confirm that we have received your proposal, please contact our office at (520) 626-7832 or uofacme@email.arizona.edu.
A directly sponsored activity is a CME activity that originates within the College of Medicine at the Arizona Health Sciences Center (the accredited provider). A jointly sponsored activity originates with, or is developed by another non-ACCME accredited organization or institution. In the case of jointly sponsored activities, the accredited provider is responsible for assuring that the CME program adheres to ACCME and AMA requirements. We expect our joint sponsors to be familiar with these requirements.
We are happy to collaborate with outside organizations that seek to support CME programs, either by direct unrestricted educational grants or by purchasing advertising or exhibits. We have developed standard Letters of Agreement that we can accept. See our Fees and Forms page for more information. It is essential to separate commercial messages from physician education and we have developed Commercial Support Policies (Policies page) to assure this separation. All CME planners should be familiar with these policies.
This can be a confusing area. Organizations that provide clinical services directly to patients, including diagnostics, are not commercial interests. Nor are organizations that provide non-health care goods and services, such as publishers and consumer trade organizations. Thus, they are not subject to our Commercial Support Policies and we do not need to sign your Letters of Agreement. Likewise, commercial entities that provide support for the general benefit of your organization, but not directly for a specific educational activity, are not subject to these policies. But, we encourage full disclosure of any outside support you receive that may be related to your educational activity. If you have questions about how to manage outside financial support, you must share these questions with us before the activity occurs.
These are ACCME requirements. The ACCME requires that accredited providers: a) use needs assessment data to plan CME activities, b) incorporate into CME activities the educational needs (knowledge, competence, or performance) that underlie the professional practice gaps of their own learners, and c) communicate the purpose or objectives of the activity so the learner is informed before participating in the activity.
If you are new to the process, or you have a question about how to develop needs, gaps, and objectives for large meetings or regularly scheduled series (RSS), you should see our various "How To" guides on the Planning Guides and Other Resources page for help.
We will need at least three types of information in order to sponsor your CME activity:
a) a completed application and necessary supporting materials before the activity can be approved,
b) relevant faculty disclosures and conflict resolutions, letters of agreement from commercial supporters, planned promotional materials, and proposed CME certificates before the activity begins, and
c) a final budget showing all commercial support, all CME credit requests from individual physicians, and a final participant headcount once the activity has been completed. You must report this data no longer than 2 months following the date of a live CME meeting or conference
We keep all CME sponsorship records for the current ACCME accreditation period or 1 year, whichever is longer. This can be up to 6 years. We keep all physician CME records for 6 years.
Yes, you can. However, before issuing any certificates for live meetings or conferences, your attendees must complete a credit request form to declare the amount of CME credit they wish to claim (up to the maximum amount allowable for your event). Furthermore, you must collect those credit request forms no later than 2 months following the end of your event. If an attendee fails to turn in his/her credit request form (or, in the case of a regularly scheduled series, if s/he fails to sign an attendance sheet), you cannot issue a CME certificate to that person. The CME Office will not authorize or validate CME certificates of participation unless you have collected and reported to us evidence of attendance, and that attendees claimed credit for their attendance. [NOTE: If you want the CME Office to issue initial or duplicate certificates, you will incur a $25 fee per certificate issued.]
- What is your tax status? Are you a 501(c)(3) organization?
While the College of Medicine is the Accredited Provider, most contracts, grants, and agreements must be signed by the University of Arizona Board of Regents. The University of Arizona is a tax exempt organization under Section 115 of the Internal Revenue Code (not Section 501(c)(3)).