The Accreditation Council for CME (ACCME) is reorganizing oneof its departments to provide better monitoring of certified activities and to expandeducation to members.

The office will be headed by Steve Singer, PhD, ACCME’s new directorof education, monitoring and improvement. He is set to start Nov. 26.

By adding monitoring to its existing department of educationand improvement, the restructuring shows the agency is attempting to make goodon changes vowed in its oversight. ACCME chief executive Murray Kopelow, MD, ina letter to the Senate Finance Committee earlier this year, indicated he wasconsidering adding “a monitoring system from which the ACCME could makeindependent decisions about compliance with its requirements.”

Its details have yet to be ironed out. The department could implementany of several measures conceived at a July board meeting, like placing trainedobservers in audiences, taking advantage of direct reporting by learners, andbecoming the key source of information about compliance and providers for thepublic. The board’s next meeting is scheduled for Nov. 29.

Singer, formerly director of educational services at PeerPointMedical Education Institute, has served as faculty for several ACCMEaccreditation and state provider workshops and may expand upon such programs inhis new role.

He will report to ACCME’s deputy chief executive, KateRegnier, MA,MBA, and will supervise a staff of four, including another new hire—SteveBiddle, MEd, manager of systems education and improvement, who starts full-timeJan. 1. The rest of the group is comprised of current staffers.

Mary Martin Lowe, PhD, formerly the director ofeducation and improvement, will assume the new role of director of accreditationand recognition services, overseeing such processes as the updatedaccreditation criteria.

It remains to be seen how effective ACCME’s latest actionswill be. Senate staffers have not commented on whether any of the proposedmeasures would be adequate to address theirconcerns, spelled out in a report last April.