Graduate Medical Education
Program Improvement
The ACGME wants to assure full integration of the competencies and their
assessment with learning and clinical care. Program improvement activities can
occur as part of educational retreats, departmental Clinical Competency
Committees; as well as feedback from internal review reports.
With the implementation of Phase III of the ACGME Outcomes Project, programs
must now document the framework for program improvement that includes:
- Internal Program Evaluations
- External Program Evaluations
- National Benchmarks
Internal Program Evaluations include:
- Performance on in-training examinations compared to national averages
- Rolling board certification pass rates (if available)
- Residents' evaluations of the educational program (annual and confidential)
- Alumni surveys
- Patient satisfaction surveys
- Systematic identification by faculty and residents of areas in need of
educational improvement
- Aggregate performance on program assessment tools
External Program Evaluation Methods, include:
- Clinical Practice Indicators or Hospital Core Quality Measures by program
- Practice indicators collected by program or institution
- Resident surveys (e.g., annual Needs Assessment Survey completed by residents)
- Active improvement plans developed and implemented as a result of internal review and/or site review
- Cycle length and number of citations by GMEC and ACGME
National Specialty Specific Benchmarks
- National specialty specific benchmarks or thresholds
- Specialties are encouraged to develop competency based program
requirements with threshold for passing
This page was last updated on: November 1, 2007.