We Are Rolling Out Our First Completely Virtual CME Course

Chamberlain’s often-used quote about living in interesting times used to sound trite, but today it does not seem to say enough to help describe how the world has changed. There are days it seems like we are climbing up the first hill of a roller coaster as it is still being built. We are all waiting for normal, whatever new normal is, while mustering along each day.

What does this mean for the AAOA? What does it mean for our members? How do we pivot to help assure we are offering services, tools, and education to help?

As the impact of COVID became real, we started to sift and sort the overwhelming amount of information. We polled members to get
some peer-to-peer examples of what members were doing (https://www.aaoallergy.org/news-from-aaoa/aaoa-covid-19-member-alert/). It became clear early that the new reality is very different depending on incidence and exposure.

We worked with AMA in healthcare efforts to get Congress, CMS, HHS, and other regulatory agencies to lift restraints on healthcare. Working together, we pushed for changes in telehealth, access to PPE, and support for physicians and their practices through the PPP in the CARES Act. We continue to monitor and work with our peer organizations to help support not only healthcare’s COVID response, but the future of medicine and physicians’ ability to re-engage in patient care and re-open their practices.
As states start relaxing restrictions, we added to our resources to include our Just In Time Content Zoom Cast Series and our Re-Starting SCIT Resource Tool.

As we are putting together this issue, we are building our new virtual course — Core Allergy & Rhinology Concepts: Age of Pandemics and
Beyond: Learn How to Reboot Your Practice and Freshen Up on Core Allergy and Rhinology Components. We culled feedback from members to help assure we hit the key topics pertinent to rebooting an otolaryngology practice. As we consider the challenges from COVID, rebooting practices opens a whole new set of questions and challenges that cause one to pause and re-think priorities. Scope of practice, patient and payer mix, cash flow, staffing skills and priorities, safety, and rebuilding patient trust all tie to how one considers pathways to reboot and regain their practice. Our goal is to make this content accessible.

So we are rolling out our first completely virtual CME Course. We are rolling it out in parts to help assure access and to get the content out in a timely way. We have reduced our cost per CME hour by 50% and offered pricing options. Members can access all three parts or register only for the parts that help them now.

This also opens opportunities to register your staff for the Core Allergy component for either a refresher on allergy diagnosis, testing, vial prep,
dosing, and related key concepts or for those who are hiring new staff to help jump start your allergy practice.

Our third component will focus on re-starting rhinology in your practice from the diagnosis and office-based procedures to core concepts in overall rhinology patient management.

We are striving to help deliver resources that will help our members rebuild their practices. We hope you will consider this unique opportunity to participate in AAOA CME programming virtually.