Does Your CME Management System Have These Flaws?

If your CME management system isn’t exactly new anymore, there’s a good chance it’s not keeping up with your administrative requirements. From clunky interfaces to a total lack of fundamental features, the problems with most CME software are numerous.

And when you’ve used the same system for years, you probably don’t know what you’re missing.

Here are four major CME management system flaws that many providers may think they’re stuck with (even if they actually aren’t).

1. Making you use spreadsheets for everything

So many CME providers are still using spreadsheets to log attendance, store learner data, compile reports, and just generally manage their CME recordkeeping. This needs to stop.

CME management systems that don’t do all of those things for you are behind the curve. Way behind.

Any time you find yourself tinkering with a spreadsheet for virtually anything CME-related, it’s a sign that your CME management software has failed you. Modern CME tools should help you do all of the following sans spreadsheets:

• Compile ACCME PARS data (you’ll have to export a spreadsheet, but you’ll never have to enter any data)
• Log attendance at events or RSS sessions
• Keep track of learner activity participation
• Store all activity and learner data
• CME certification management
• Process learner credit

Not having to deal with spreadsheets can save you hours of time each week! When these tasks are carried out automatically and in the background of your daily CME doings, you’ll have more time to devote to meaningful, impactful work.

2. Requiring manual adjustments for each and every activity

Let’s say you offer an activity that holds appeal to family practitioners, obstetricians, nurses, and others. One type of learner will claim a certain type and amount of credit. Others will claim other types.

Your CME management system might require you to do a number of different things, including:

• Creating individual activities for each learner type
• Updating the activity over and over again with the appropriate credit type, depending on who is participating
• Changing credit information after learners complete the activity so that you can be sure each credit claim matches with what the learner needs

This kind of thing takes forever. Your CME software should allow you to set up an activity with multiple credit options. That way, individual learners can select their credit type before completing the activity.

The result is a whole lot less work for you – you only have to set up credit information one time! And you’ll never have to field individual requests from learners about whether they were granted the right kind of credit for an activity.

3. Recreating certificates for each activity

If you have to make a new certificate for every activity (or, worse yet, for each learner), you’ve got your work cut out for you. Don’t you think you should be able to use one CME certificate template, create the certificate one time for each type of credit you offer, and then never have to think about it again?

Well, it can be that easy.

Here’s how we solved this problem with Rievent. All you have to do is create each type of certificate once. After that, learners receive the right certificate immediately after finishing an activity. They can log in and view or print the certificate at any time.

While we’re on the subject of learners accessing documentation…

4.  Forcing you to generate documentation for learners

Responding to emails and calls about transcripts, certificates, and other documents is very time-consuming for many CME providers. And the reason it takes so much time is that their CME management system fails to make those documents available to learners.

Getting CME documents online should be as easy as getting a bank statement. You shouldn’t have to email anybody or submit a support request to get it. Your CME management system should make those documents available to learners whenever they need them.

That way, you don’t have to track them down and distribute them to learners on an ad hoc basis.

Does this sound like your life?

Many CME administrators we work with are so accustomed to spreadsheets, manual activity updates, and case-by-case document retrieval that they haven’t realized there’s a better way.

There is a better way.

Rievent does away with all of that tedious CME administration, so you can spend more time building and improving activities, analyzing learner data, and implementing changes that help you organization grow. After using Rievent, you’ll be shocked that you put up with inadequate CME software for so long.

And you’ll be glad there aren’t so many spreadsheets cluttering up your desktop.