2021 Joint Accreditation Data Report Shows Growing Range of Accredited Interprofessional Continuing Education

We’re delighted to announce the publication of the Joint Accreditation Report: Driving Improvement through Accredited Continuing Education for Healthcare Teams–2021, which includes data from a community of 132 jointly accredited organizations that offer healthcare professionals and teams an array of continuing education resources to promote high-quality, safe, and effective care for patients.

Key Takeaways 

  • The 2021 report includes data from 132 jointly accredited providers, an increase of almost 17% since 2020, when 113 providers were jointly accredited.
  • The number of activities rose 32% and the number of learner interactions increased by nearly 9% from 2020.
  • Performance/quality improvement activities, included as part of the Menu of Criteria for Joint Accreditation with Commendation, increased by 178% from 2020 to 2021, to 89 activities.
  • Live courses, which include not just in-person events but also live remote or online events, increased by 59% from 2020.
  • In a sign of continuing innovation, “other” or “blended learning” activities saw an increase of over 400% from 2020 to 2021, to 405 activities.
  • The most common activity types were enduring materials and live courses.
  • The activity type with the most interactions was, by far, enduring materials, at more than 20 million interactions with healthcare professionals.
  • For the first time, we are reporting credits or contact hours by activity type. We are pleased to see total IPCE credits exceeded 150,000. In addition, the total number of organizations offering IPCE credit increased from 85 in 2020 to 96 in 2021, with most of that growth coming from publishing and education companies, offering further evidence of the value of continuing education by the team, for the team.

The purpose of the report is to provide a comprehensive picture of the scope of the accredited interprofessional continuing education (IPCE) community, including the range of jointly accredited organizations, educational activities, and learners. We have published this report as a service to the IPCE community. Jointly accredited providers can use this report to benchmark themselves against their colleagues and to demonstrate the value of their work to leadership and stakeholders.

We thank the jointly accredited providers who submitted their data into the Joint Accreditation Program and Activity Reporting System (JA-PARS), making this report possible and creating the opportunity to present a more complete and in-depth picture of IPCE.

We welcome your questions or feedback about this report. Please contact us at [email protected].