Welcome. In collaboration with the University of Cincinnati, North American Center for Continuing Medical Education, LLC, and as part of the Coalition of Rheumatology Educators™ (CORE™) multi-faceted initiative, we bring you an innovative opportunity to ready yourselves and your practice to meet performance measures that will help improve outcomes and that will be part of the required steps you take for reimbursement and for re-accreditation.

This Performance Improvement (PI)-CORE™ continuing medical education (CME) activity is designed with self-assessment and self-directed educational content provided here to improve rheumatologists’ practice according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), in line with the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Core Data Set quality-improvement measures for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and including performance measures based on expert opinion.

The majority of RA is undertreated and data are starting to show that consistent measurement of disease activity will lead to more aggressive and appropriate therapy in RA patients. Measurement will allow rheumatologists to improve functional status assessment in RA patients to reduce morbidity and mortality.

The concept of consistent and standardized disease measurement is relevant for all RA patients. Because it can be challenging to implement new methods for standardized patient disease activity measurement into a complex clinical practice environment, practical knowledge of evidence-based recommendations is essential.

Thus, using PI-based CME to increase rheumatologists’ knowledge of evidence-based disease measurement recommendations is a critical component to standardizing and documenting quality of care and enhancing office practice routines for improved patient outcomes.

By connecting CORE™ education to value-added practical assessment, rheumatologists will be well prepared to utilize these tools on every patient visit and ultimately benefit patient outcomes.

We look forward to your participation, your increased knowledge in this area through your participation in Stage A, Stage B, and Stage C of this initiative, and we look forward to your feedback.

If you have questions along the way with regard to completing the patient charts or using the disease activity measures discussed in the initiative’s interventions (original on-demand webcasts, published studies), we welcome you contacting us via email.

Sincerely,

Your PI-CORE™ faculty