The United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP) is the largest North American organization for pathologists, with over 8,500 members ranging from pathologists-in-training to practicing pathologists.
USCAP is dedicated to providing these medical professionals with education that reinforces and updates learners’ knowledge of pathology and understanding of pathologic processes, as well as knowledge of current practices in pathology quality and patient safety.
A top continuing medical education (CME) provider, USCAP has been awarded Accreditation with Commendation for 6 years by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME®). Additionally, they offer Lifelong Learning credit in the American Board of Pathology’s (ABPath) Continuing Certification program.
USCAP produces a variety of educational resources for its members, including live and on-demand courses as well as two highly regarded scientific journals. When USCAP decided to expand their online learning offerings to include recordings and materials from their in-person Interactive Learning Center, they realized they needed a more robust platform to host, manage, and deliver the content.
USCAP required a scalable learning management system (LMS) to house their rapidly growing eLearning Library. Because they publish up to 15 new courses a year, the platform had to be user-friendly for both administrators and learners, with the flexibility to easily customize and update content.
Additionally, USCAP wanted to streamline the process for learners to report their continuing medical education credits to the ACCME accrediting body. USCAP staff had to manually transfer each learner's credits every month, an extremely time-consuming task.
USCAP partnered with Blue Sky eLearn to leverage Path LMS to host all its enduring online educational content. This includes learning content from the Interactive Learning Center, select sessions from the Annual Meeting, live webinars, and more.
Path LMS has provided a flexible, all-in-one platform that has allowed USCAP to expand their content library and membership over the years. They have steadily increased their users by 153% since 2019, and in turn, their non-dues revenue.
Path LMS has become one of USCAP’s main revenue generators. Since moving their learning content to Path LMS, they have tripled revenue generated from their education offerings over the span of seven years. Susanna Martinez, Education and Programs Coordinator at USCAP, attributes this success to building up their Path LMS user base and consistently updating the site with valuable new content offerings. USCAP also shares links on Path LMS from affiliated groups who produce and host their own content.
The platform’s features, ease-of-use, and ongoing collaboration with Blue Sky eLearn have also contributed to USCAP’s long-term online learning success: “Path LMS is very easy to use. From the admin side, there was flexibility to get creative with how we wanted our eLearning Library set up and there are many customization opportunities within the platform. From a learner side, the site interface is clean and easy to understand and navigate,” says Susanna.
Pathologists, along with other medical professionals, are required to complete a certain amount of continuing medical education each year and report their credits back to an accrediting body.
To ease the administrative burden on providers like USCAP and medical professionals, ACCME created a hub for centralized CME data called the Program and Activity System (PARS). CME providers use PARS to submit comprehensive data on their educational activities, which is a key part of being an accredited CME provider.
Path LMS developed an integration with PARS to bridge the gap between the completion of learning activities within the LMS and the reporting of those activities to ACCME. Once an eligible user earns a certificate within a course or section in Path LMS, they can then simply click a button to send their activity data back to PARS.
“The PARS integration with Path LMS has been a huge time-saver within our organization. Prior to the integration, staff would have to manually transfer all user credits, which was time consuming,” says Susanna. “Now post-integration, that time can be better spent elsewhere. Users enjoy the capability of transferring their own credits when they want, instead of trusting that someone else will do it on their behalf each month.”
USCAP’s advice for other CME providers looking to implement an LMS is to make sure that they integrate with ACCME PARS webservice. Path LMS provided the capabilities they needed to significantly reduce administrative workload while empowering learners to easily report their own continuing education credits.
Overall, implementing Path LMS has allowed USCAP to vastly expand its online education offerings and triple revenue. The platform's flexibility, customization, and integration with PARS have been instrumental in the organization's continued success and growth. Partnership with Blue Sky eLearn and Path LMS has provided USCAP with a robust, long-term solution to deliver and manage impactful learning resources for pathologists across North America.
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