PROVIDING PRIMARY CARE CLINICIANS WITH KNOWLEDGE AND RESOURCES TO BETTER SERVE THEIR PATIENTS.
PCN ACCREDITED EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES ARE CREATIVE, ETHICAL, FREE OF COMMERCIAL BIAS, BASED ON ADULT LEARNING PRINCIPLES, AND FOUNDED ON EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE
COMPANY HISTORY
Primary Care Network (PCN) was founded in 1997 as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving patient care through continuing medical education. Our goal is to provide primary care clinicians with knowledge and resources to better serve their patients by providing the best patient-centered education and peer-to-peer opportunities. PCN provides education in a wide variety of program formats and therapeutic areas. PCN is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™.
Partnerships
PCN works with a variety of partners, such as medical education companies, hospitals, and medical associations, to provide meaningful and clinically relevant continuing medical education aimed to improve patient outcomes.
Primary Care Network (PCN) aims to achieve leadership in providing continuing medical education (CME) to primary care clinicians. PCN strives for this goal by designing educational activities that are creative, ethical, free of commercial bias, based on adult learning principles, and founded on evidence-based medicine. It is PCN’s goal to develop activities that identify the needs of our audience through a thorough planning process, deliver each activity to result in enhanced knowledge, and increase competencies to provide better patient outcomes. It is also PCN’s vision to develop and implement the educational activities in partnership and collaboration with other experts in the field of medicine and continuing medical education.
The continuing medical education efforts of PCN are directed toward primary care clinicians throughout the United States. This includes physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. While the primary audience is comprised of physicians, PCN recognizes the importance of a broader range of clinicians that deliver primary health care.
PCN utilizes a variety of educational formats to deliver its activities including:
- Live activities
- Internet CME
- Enduring materials
The content of the activities accredited by PCN includes a wide variety of education that is pertinent to primary care clinicians. Content area is based upon gap analysis and assessment of the educational need(s).
As a result of our educational activities, PCN furthers the knowledge, competence, and performance of primary care clinicians. PCN is committed to measuring the effectiveness and impact of its CME activities in achieving changes in clinical behavior, awareness of health issues, knowledge of treatment paradigms, competence in implementing skills, and clinical performance. The results of CME activities accredited by PCN are measured through the following methods:
- Pre- and post-activity assessments
- Activity evaluations that assess new knowledge/skill acquisition, intent to change, clinical relevance, and achievement in meeting the stated learning objectives
- Post- activity surveys that measure changes in knowledge, practice habits, and/or change in patient outcomes
- Focus groups that assess relevance to practice
- Post activity knowledge assessment and self-reported change in behavior
- Patient Registry
