Creating the practice-learning environment: using information technology to support a new model of continuing medical education.

Many of the traditional approaches to providing continuing medical education (CME) have failed to improve physician performance and health care outcomes. In the current health care environment, physicians are being held to unprecedented levels of accountability to patients, payers, and society at large. A greater emphasis is being placed on measuring and improving the clinical and fiscal outcomes of medical care. If they are to help physicians practice more effectively and efficiently, CME developers must reformulate the missions and goals of their programs. CME must become a means for improving patient outcomes through enhanced physician performance. The author describes how a new practice-learning model for CME might be implemented using currently available information technology. She also discusses how CME programs, with the help of information technology, can help physicians identify learning opportunities, find the best resources for learning, and apply learning to practice. She then briefly discusses three programs that have begun to utilize information technology to expand the scope of CME: the Maintenance of Competence Program in Canada, the Stanford Health Information Network for Education, and a computer-simulation program at the Indiana University School of Medicine.