By March 17, 2023, your organization is required to provide the California Medical Association (CMA) and the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) with 2022 continuing medical education (CME) activities data through the ACCME’s Program and Activity Reporting System (PARS). Join CMA CME staff at a webinar February 1, 2023, from 3-4 p.m. for an overview.  

What do I have to report by March 17, 2023?
To fulfill annual reporting requirements, complete these five steps:

1. Accept the terms for the annual agreement, located on the dashboard in PARS under Agreement Page. Each year, all accredited providers are asked to accept the Annual Agreement regarding data submission and compliance with CMA and ACCME policies and procedures.
2. Enter all activities that occurred in 2022 and close any that are no longer being offered.
3. For any enduring materials that are continuing into 2023, update the total learner counts as of December 31, 2022. Note that providers no longer need to enter enduring material activities for each year they are provided. Enduring materials should remain open until the end date. Once providers have entered the enduring material once, they will only need to update learner counts each year thereafter.
4. Complete and submit the program summary for 2022. The link to the program summary is located on the dashboard in PARS.
5. Review and update contact information by clicking “Back to Accreditation Management” in the top right section of the PARS dashboard.
6. RSVP for CMA CME’s webinar by emailing cme@cmadocs.org.

How do I close my activities?
Once you have completed all required fields and added your total learner counts for all activities that ended in 2022, you will need to actively change the status of those activities to “closed.” You have several options for closing your activities:

• Manually set the status to closed for an individual activity, or manually bulk close a group of selected activities. You can watch a video tutorial here.
• Add/update your activities using the new Excel template and select “Yes” in the Close Activity field.
• Batch close activities using the annual reporting Excel template (only for activities that are already entered in PARS).

Start early! We encourage you to begin entering data in the new PARS as soon as possible and to enter activities as they are implemented. You can enter basic information about an activity before it has taken place and complete the entry after the activity has occurred.

The program summary and agreement are found at the top left of your PARS dashboard. Completion of these steps fulfills year-end reporting requirements. Note that while ACCME requires year end reporting to be completed by March 31, 2023, CMA’s due date is March 17, 2023, to allow time for our audit.

How can I get help with PARS?
ACCME has created several resources, including an annual reporting checklist, new PARS resources, FAQs, and how-to videos. You can also find CMA tips and resources here to assist you in your use of PARS.