TUESDAY, Sept. 13 (HealthDay News) -- Internet-based continuing medical education (CME) courses appear to be just as good or better at disseminating medical information as traditional live courses, according to a report in the Sept. 7 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Michael Fordis, M.D., of the Center for Collaborative and Interactive Technologies at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, and colleagues performed a randomized controlled trial of 97 primary care physicians from 21 practice sites in Houston, between August 2001 to July 2002. A control group of 18 physicians were drawn from the same sites. The physicians were assigned to either an Internet-based CME course that could be accessed over a period of two weeks or a single, live, small-group workshop.
Both courses provided a significant increase in physician knowledge base immediately after the course (31%) and 12 weeks out (36.4%). Those who took the Internet-based course showed an increase in adherence to cholesterol treatment guidelines in high-risk patients (preintervention, 85.3%; postintervention, 90.3%), the authors add.
"The results of our study provide evidence for additional value that can be realized from the expanded use of appropriately designed Internet-based CME in promoting health care quality," the authors conclude.
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