AANS’ Role in Joint Providership
The AANS is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education (CME) for physicians. On a periodic basis, the AANS begins the process of reaccreditation, part of which includes verification that the activities we provide CME for have met all ACCME requirements. This includes all jointly provided meetings. In short, the AANS’ accreditation is on the line with every meeting that we jointly provide and that accreditation may be withdrawn if the requirements are not met.
The following is a brief summary of the AANS’ responsibilities:
- Processing and reviewing of the Joint Providership Application, including determining if the gaps, data sources and needs are appropriate for the activity
- Review and approval of any and all promotional material related to the activity
- Review and approval of the learning objectives; the activity agenda to include calculation and granting of CME credits; the evaluation form; the attendance verification form; the activity budget; and the final program
- Cross-referencing the speaker and educational content planners' names with the names on the disclosure list in the final program and ensuring a properly completed Mitigation of Conflict of Interest form is on file for all of those with disclosed relationships
- For those receiving educational grants, cross-referencing the Letters of Agreement with what is listed in the final program and ensuring the amounts on the Letters of Agreement match with the final budget amount for grants/sponsorship
- Ongoing correspondence regarding the joint providership process and requests for further clarification/information
- Promotion of jointly provided activities on the online AANS meetings calendar
- After the completion of the meeting, collecting and reviewing the completed participant attendance verification forms; attendance roster (submitted in Excel); all on-site materials (program book, handouts); verbal disclosures made onsite during the activity; final financial accounting of the activity and the participant evaluation summary report
- AANS reserves the right to send AANS staff (at your expense) during any point of the planning process if there are concerns that the Joint Providership criteria are not being met
In addition, AANS will ensure that there is no commercial bias. Even when a group accepts no commercial support for their meeting, attendees can detect bias in individual presentations as indicated on the evaluations. We review evaluation data and determine if the bias warrants follow-up communication to either the individual speaker(s) and/or the group contact.
AANS staff manually inputs CME credit and emails the CME certificates after completion of the meeting.
While AANS staff is available to guide you along in the process, it is the sole responsibility of the group to collect and submit all required materials to the AANS.
Management of an activity (such as coordinating hotel logistics, registration and tabulating evaluations) is the responsibility of the joint providing organization. The AANS can provide a tabulating service for your evaluations and possibly other management services at an additional fee(s).
