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Washington Medical Commission Joins ACCME and State Medical Licensing Boards Collaboration

We’re happy to notify accredited providers in Washington that the Washington Medical Commission has joined the ACCME and State Medical Boards Collaboration. This initiative will streamline the CME reporting process for your learners who are licensed physicians in Washington. The Washington Medical Commission will use ACCME’s Program and Activity Reporting System, or PARS, to verify that physicians who are renewing their medical license have fulfilled Washington’s CME participation requirements in the prior four years.

The Washington Medical Commission joins eight other state licensing boards in collaborating with the ACCME to report learner participation. We encourage all accredited providers to begin entering attendance records in PARS at your earliest convenience so that there is sufficient data to make licensure determinations in the coming years.

How can I participate?

Using PARS, you can report data about the CME credit that Washington licensees have earned at your activities. The Washington Medical Commission will have access to this data to more easily determine that physicians have fulfilled their CME requirements for relicensure. This will greatly streamline the process for physicians, who will not have to collect and send their CME certificates themselves, and it will simplify the audit review process for the Washington Medical Commission.

What is the benefit of participating?

When you report CME credit in PARS for your learners, you decrease their administrative reporting burden, enabling them to spend less time tracking and uploading CME credits and dedicate more of their time to high-quality learning and, most importantly, to patient care. Did you know approximately 25% of physicians are audited in each licensing cycle? Audited physicians must send documentation of participation in 200 hours of CME in the previous four years. You’ll also reduce your time spent responding to credit inquiries and transcript requests from your learners when it’s time for relicensure if they are audited.

How do I get started?

The ACCME has created the following resources to help you report learner CME credit information in PARS:

ACCME will be participating in the Washington State Medical Association (WSMA) CME Provider Conference, providing details and a demonstration about learner data reporting. You can register for the conference here. If you are not able to attend the WSMA CME Provider Conference, please email info@accme.org so ACCME may answer your questions or do a short demo with you to explain the process.