Continuing Education
Advancing Patient Safety With Industry-Leading CPE
Summary
Our accredited education courses, grounded in real-world claims insights, translate patient safety and risk management knowledge into practical steps clinicians can take.
One of the important ways The Doctors Company delivers on our mission to advance, protect, and reward the practice of good medicine is our industry-leading continuing professional education (CPE) program. These CPE courses translate patient safety and risk management knowledge into practical steps that clinicians and their teams can follow to reduce preventable errors and improve outcomes for both patients and their practices.
The programs are shaped by patterns we observe in claims data and our loss prevention work. This perspective focuses on the risks most likely to lead to patient harm and liability exposure, and on evidence-informed behaviors that mitigate those risks in everyday clinical settings. Combined with rigorous accreditation standards and a modern learning experience, it is a gold-standard model for turning data-driven insights into safer practice.
Accreditation Milestones: Building Trust Through Recognized Standards
Our education program has grown to meet the evolving needs of healthcare professionals. We were first accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) in 1995, as announced in the Second Quarter 1995 issue of The Doctor’s Advocate:
Our courses now serve multiple professional audiences while meeting the expectations of three major accrediting bodies: the ACCME, the American Nurses Credentialing Center, and the American Dental Association Continuing Education Recognition Program. We offer continuing medical education (CME), nursing continuing professional development contact hours, and continuing dental education at no cost to members and nonmembers alike.
These distinctions have been more than credentials—they represent The Doctors Company’s commitment to educational integrity, rigorous planning, and measurable outcomes. In 2021, we earned ACCME Accreditation with Commendation, an especially meaningful honor because it recognizes organizations that go beyond core standards to demonstrate educational leadership, innovation, and measurable impact. Commendation reflects sustained commitment to best practices, such as designing education to close practice gaps, evaluating outcomes, and advancing priorities that matter to patient care and safety. In short, it is a mark of excellence and strong validation that the education courses are not only relevant but also built to drive meaningful change.
Case-Based Learning Grounded in Claims Insights
These programs don’t just present what can go wrong; they teach what to do differently. Clinicians and their teams learn how to identify the root causes of patient harm and litigation through case-based learning that mirrors the decisions made under the constraints they face in practice. Instead of teaching in the abstract, we use scenarios drawn from claims trends and patient safety experience to explore what happened, why it happened, and what could have changed the outcome. This approach helps learners practice identifying risk early, make sound decisions at key inflection points, and apply concrete strategies to lessen the likelihood of harm and liability in everyday practice.
The curriculum addresses the issues that most often lead to litigation, including incomplete documentation and recordkeeping, diagnostic errors, breakdowns in follow-up and referrals, medication errors and high-risk prescribing, inadequate informed consent and misaligned expectations, and communication failures within and across care teams. Our courses teach practice processes that strengthen reliability across the patient journey, covering emerging and operational risks like augmented intelligence, privacy and cybersecurity, and regulatory and professional accountability.
Practice-Facing Expertise Behind Every Course
The CPE program offers a rich catalog of no-cost live (in-person and virtual) and enduring, on-demand courses designed for physicians, dentists, advanced practice clinicians, and practice staff.
Our patient safety risk managers are the experts behind our education. They are dedicated professionals who work directly with our members and see risk unfold in real practice, which makes them uniquely qualified to create education that is applicable, relevant, and focused on preventing the kinds of events that lead to harm and claims. By analyzing patterns in claims and safety events, they translate complex, practice-based risk into usable guidance, turning lessons from claims, near misses, and recurring vulnerabilities into training that clinicians can use immediately.
We work closely with our member groups and practice leaders to identify emerging needs and customize education that directly addresses their risk vulnerabilities. These partnerships demonstrate our commitment to helping each group and practice lower the risks most relevant to their specialty, patient population, and care setting.
CloudCME: A Modern Learning Experience
To keep pace with learner expectations and accreditation reporting needs, in 2023, we invested in a new learning management system: CloudCME. Implemented as part of our broader modernization efforts, CloudCME brings state-of-the-art technology to how we deliver and track education, providing one streamlined, user-friendly learning experience with a secure hub for activity documentation, learner engagement, evaluations, and credit claiming. Behind the scenes, CloudCME also strengthens our documentation and enables more accurate, efficient reporting to our accrediting organizations.
Fifty years in, we remain dedicated to our mission, and CPE is one of the most practical and effective ways we deliver on that mission—by sharing what we learn from real-world risk and translating it into accessible, accredited learning experiences. Explore our CPE catalog to find live events and on-demand courses aligned to your role, specialty, and risk mitigation priorities.
The Doctor’s Advocate is published by The Doctors Company to advise and inform its members about loss prevention and insurance issues.
The guidelines suggested in this newsletter are not rules, do not constitute legal advice, and do not ensure a successful outcome. They attempt to define principles of practice for providing appropriate care. The principles are not inclusive of all proper methods of care nor exclusive of other methods reasonably directed at obtaining the same results.
The ultimate decision regarding the appropriateness of any treatment must be made by each healthcare provider considering the circumstances of the individual situation and in accordance with the laws of the jurisdiction in which the care is rendered.
The Doctor’s Advocate is published quarterly by Corporate Communications, The Doctors Company. Letters and articles, to be edited and published at the editor’s discretion, are welcome. The views expressed are those of the letter writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or official policy of The Doctors Company. Please sign your letters, and address them to the editor.
