Introduction
One of the first medical centers in the nation, Thomas Jefferson University today encompasses three academic decisions: Jefferson Medical College, the College of Graduate Studies and the College of Health Professions, and University Services. Founded in 1824, Jefferson Medical College has awarded more than 27,000 medical degrees and has more living graduates than any other medical school in the nation. It offers both Traditional medical education programs and innovative joint degree programs to its enrollment of approximately (900) students each year. The Jefferson Medical School has been recognized as one of the top graduate schools in the US by the US NEWS and WORLD REPORT.

Mission
Purpose:
Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University considers the lifelong professional development of physicians to be a dynamic, ongoing process. Jefferson is dedicated to developing, delivering, and evaluating quality educational experiences/opportunities that stimulate, educate, and empower physicians to provide the highest standard of care throughout a lifetime of professional practice. Drawing upon our institutional strengths in educational, research, and clinical expertise, we endeavor to equip physicians with the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to remediate, maintain, and/or enhance their ability to deliver world class medical service across the continuum of care to patients, their families, the public, and the profession. Our goals include assisting physicians in establishing and maintaining their basic competency; facilitating performance beyond their basic competency; and helping participants effectively evaluate their own educational efforts.

CME is an academic enterprise guided by the principles and goals of academic medicine. Jefferson is committed to drawing on our experiences as well as the body of CME theory and research to elevate the effectiveness of its CME Program and to advance the field of academic continuing education. The CME Mission maintains congruence with the overall educational mission of Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, maintaining its place along the continuum of medical education.

Content:
The subject matter appropriate to Jefferson's overall CME educational program reflects the broad scope of education, research and clinical practice at Jefferson, and therefore may encompass the entire breadth and depth of the art and science of medicine. Activity content may be organized around medical knowledge and patient care (specific medical specialties or subspecialties, disease states and processes), practice or systems based processes, public health topics, research findings, professionalism, and/or interpersonal and communication skills. In addition, topics that improve the practice of medical education itself may be included. The choice of content is dependent on the strategic interests of the institution, the availability of financial resources from either internal or external sources, and the consistency of the potential activities with Jefferson's mission.

Target Audience:
Jefferson's target audiences are representative of all customers of CME, including full-time and volunteer faculty, members of medical staffs in teaching and health system affiliates, regional health professionals, and national and international attendees. The intent of an activity is the determining factor in the appropriate selection of the target audience. Depending upon the intent, learners may be drawn from regional, national and/or international populations of physicians across all specialties and at all levels of training. Interdisciplinary audiences are sought when appropriate.

Types of Activities Provided:
Jefferson uses a wide variety of educational formats, from traditional to experiential and innovative, to best meet learner needs and to give the learner opportunities to match their preferred learning style to a spectrum of educational delivery systems. Formats can include but are not limited to, live offerings including lecture-driven conferences, small group work, experiential learning opportunities and one-on-one educational experiences, regularly scheduled conferences, distance learning through telephone, television and internet technologies, and asynchronous enduring material formats including print, audio, video, computer based and journal-based instruction. Jefferson also offers performance improvement CME for physicians. Jefferson also has demonstrated success in partnering with other accredited and non-accredited institutions/organizations when appropriate and congruent with its overall mission.

Expected results of both individual activities and the overall CME program:
Evaluation stands at the center of this process as the essential driving force necessary to maintain and/or improve educational quality. Program evaluation incorporates both educational program and administrative effectiveness.

Educational results: Each activity will be evaluated based on the identified intent of the educational offering. Information derived from the evaluation of individual activities is used as formative and summative feedback in the quality assessment of the individual activity and contributes to the quality improvement and enhancement of the overall Jefferson CME educational program. It is expected that individual continuing medical education activities will be rated well by participants in meeting stated objectives, provide balanced and rigorous information, and stimulate positive responses from participants in terms of impact of the activity on knowledge, skills, attitudes, patient care and/or future actions. Expected results include assessment of the impact of Jefferson's programming on physician competence, performance, and ultimately, patient outcomes utilizing mechanisms determined in the planning and development of each activity as appropriate.

Administrative results: The unit responsible for administering the CME program at Jefferson is expected to develop, maintain and improve its administrative systems in support of Jefferson's educational programming, and maintain compliance with ACCME criteria.

Assessing expected results: Quality improvement efforts in CME are based on reviewing appropriate data as captured through the Performance Monitoring System, which enables us to analyze and benchmark individual activities and overall educational results as well as monitor for compliance with ACCME requirements. This information is the foundation of our continuing improvement efforts and the basis of quality education research.

Administration:
Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians. Jefferson Medical College, earned a six year accreditation, an achievement reached by only a select group of accredited CME sponsors. The ACCME recognized Jefferson in 2006 with Commendations in the following areas of the ACCME Essential Areas and Standards:

• Mission
• Planning
• Needs Assessment
• Overall Program Evaluation
• Organizational Structure and Resources
• Standards for Commercial Support

Certified CME Activities:
The OCME manages a large variety of CME activities certified for Category 1 credit, including typical medical school activities like Regularly Scheduled Conferences and local/regional symposia. Additionally, Jefferson maintains a national CME presence through the certification of enduring materials, national symposia, journal-based CME, Internet CME and national lecture series as well as the newly emerging area of Performance Improvement CME.

American Medical Association (AMA) Category 1 credits are awarded through the Office of CME for sponsored and jointly sponsored activities, regularly scheduled series, and enduring materials.

Highlights:

• In August 2006, Jefferson Medical College earned Reaccreditation with Commendation from the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), extending the Medical College's CME accreditation through to 2012. Accreditation with Commendation places Jefferson's CME program in the top 12% of accredited providers. This marked the second consecutive accreditation cycle in which Jefferson earned Commendation.
  
  
• In response to new continuing education initiatives from the American Medical Association, Jefferson developed and implemented several Performance Improvement projects for in- and out-patient settings. These are being reported to the national CME community as a model approach to Performance Improvement projects (PI-CME).
  
  
• At the November 2006 Council of Medical Specialty Societies CME Summit, Jefferson presented its model for PI-CME and data from our first completed project "A Pilot Study in Performance Improvement CME: Using an Electronic Health Record for Guided Self Assessment and Learning".
  
  
• Jefferson OCME maintains an active presence at national CME and medical conferences as evidenced by our growing list of presentations.
  
  
• The OCME website at http://jeffline.jefferson.edu/jeffcme/ has grown in depth and scope, and now incorporates a calendar of events, online registration, online certificate retrieval, links to relevant CME sites, and postings of a variety of enduring materials and internet-specific CME activities.
  
  
• Technology advances are incorporated into the daily practice of the OCME. These include web-based testing and evaluation, scanning technology, implementation of audience response system (ARS).

The Office of CME can provide access to the expertise of the over 1000 faculty members of the Jefferson Medical College, and has collaboratively worked with Jefferson's Department of Health Policy and Outcomes, the Center for Research in Medical Education and Health Care, the Academic Information and Services office (instructional design and technology), and various other support organizations on campus and off.