Maximize Your CME: The Gift Card Strategy

Have You Ever Seen Those ads for gift card CME where you purchase a CME course and you get a gift card back and they're not little gift cards like 25 or $50 often times they're gift cards that are 500 1,000 $1500 back and have you wondered are those legitimate like is that something that is allowed or maybe you're just learning about gift cards tme for the first time and you're wondering what is this I want to know more well stay tuned because this video is all about gift card CME hi it's Michelle with the medicine couch thanks for joining me if you like what I do then please hit that subscribe button and share this video with colleagues who might find it interesting all right let's talk about CME well first of all CME is a fact of life if you are a medical provider and PAs have a pretty big requirement in fact we have some of the highest CME requirements out there Pas have to get 100 CME hours every 2 years and 50 of those hours have to be category one CME category one is anything that you get a certificate for so these would be like programs that you buy you go through a course you take a test you get the certificate or if you attend a conference in person and get a certificate from that and category one is often expensive but there is some pretty decent free category 1 CME to be found online I made a video about that previously I'll put a link up here if you are interested in checking that out now CME I think in general is is a great thing it helps us to kind of keep our medical knowledge fresh helps us keep up with the latest advancements in medicine and the newest guidelines and it also helps us become more confident in our practice helping us to give better care and to be able to move through our appointments and our charting quicker now all CME though is not created equal so at the end of this I'm going to give you a recommendation for what I think is some of the best CME out there and it comes with gift cards so let's talk about gift card tme what exactly is it well it seems pretty straightforward you purchase tme and you get a gift card but it is a little bit more nuanced than that so normally what you see is a program that will be advertised say for $1,000 this is usually like an online CME course and you can purchase it straight out for $1,000 or often times they will give you a gift card option so that means you will purchase the same CME but you'll purchase it for like 1,500 or $2,000 or more and then the difference between the cost of the CME and your actual purchase price you will get back in a gift card usually they're a gift card for like Amazon or something like that now why would you do this if you could buy the cheaper CME well for those who get CME funds as part of their their compensation packet you can take the receipt for the full amount and submit it to your company and if they reimburse you for the full amount then the CME is paid for by the company plus you get to keep that extra gift card money as a rebate so this is why the question comes up is it legitimate is it something that is actually allowed the other side of a coin is if it's allowed is it ethical is it something you should be doing so this issue was looked at by the accreditation Council for continuing medical education they are the organization that basically oversees almost all of the continuing medical education out there so organizations like aapa follow the accreditation council's recommendations when they are certifying category 1 CME now the accreditation Council like I said looked at these gift card CMEs and they put out guidelines referring to them in January of 2022 and basically they said that gift card purchases with CME are allowed as long as two stipulations are followed the first thing is that the receipt has to be itemized it has to Clearly say the value the cost of the CME the value of the gift card and then what the total cost of the purchase was the other stipulation is something that I think will probably be a surprise to a lot of providers who have purchased these gift cards in the past and that is that the gift card purchaser needs to be aware that that that gift card is actually considered income for income tax purposes now another consideration when we're talking about if they are legit and allowed is what your company's policies are some companies have very strict written policies about their CME and they specifically say in their guidelines that they will not reimburse for the gift cards so the best thing to do is to look for written policy and read through it and see if they say anything about it if they don't specifically say anything about it then they may or may not approve the full amount I bet sometimes it really just depends on how closely your organization actually combes to the receipts or if they just look to see if you have a receipt and what the total is So if it doesn't say in writing you might want to check with HR or you could check around with some colleagues or you could just take your chances and submit it now the other side of the issue is the ethical considerations and I did some research on this video before I I recorded it and read some people opinions in different forums and and on Reddit and it it seems like people kind of come down into two different camps one is that they absolutely think it's fine their argument is that I am purchasing something for a cost and with that cost I get a gift it shouldn't matter to my company whether I get a gift or not I have a certain amount of CME dollars and I'm purchasing something that falls within that budget other people argue that CME is so expensive and like if you go to a a conference one year you are going to be paying out of your pocket to cover all of the cost of the conference your CME money will likely cover the registration cost but by the time you add in Flight in hotel room it's going to cost you a th000 $2,000 out of your pocket so they argue that if you buy one of these online programs one year it just offsets the cost that you're going to have to spend to go to a conference in another year Well an argument is that Pas and NPS don't get as much C money as Physicians do that's not really fair especially in the case of Pas when we have to get as much or sometimes more than Physicians have to get for CME so some people may feel like that this is a way to kind of level that playing field so it's totally up to you how you feel about these gift card CMEs and what you think is fair but just know that as far as the governing bodies are concerned that they are allowed and legitimate now the other issue is not be swayed into purchasing CME that is not what you need or is not high quality CME just because they offer a gift card and I told you I was going to tell you what I feel is some of the best CME out there and that is CME for life this is a company that is owned and run by a PA John balinsky if you've watched this channel you know that I have promoted many of their products before I've taken one of their online courses and I also attended a live urgent care conference in Vegas and I was just blown away I think that they have some of the greatest CME now they have a mix of online courses and live in-person conferences the online courses are the ones that are available for this gift card CME and they have many more courses Beyond urgent care so they also have emergency medicine hospital medicine critical care they have a black belt EKG course they have basic procedures and wound care and then they also have the penry review course I've not attended one of their penry review courses yet but that will be happening this summer uh towards the end of June I'll be joining them in San Antonio and as always I will have a review of that conference uh after I come back in addition to these different courses that you can choose from CME for Life lets you choose either an Amazon gift card or an Apple gift card and then they have different options where they let you decide how much you want the gift card to be I think it ranges from 500 to 2,000 I think is the max and then it is in $500 increments in between there so if you're curious about that CME for Life Urgent Care conference and you want to know more about what the conference was really like I did a review of that conference and I will post that here they have multiple live conferences throughout the year and then they're held in several different locations thank you for joining me and as always take care stay sane and I'll see you next time on the medicine couch bye

Channel: The Medicine Couch

Views: 256

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Id: MEkS0aVwxS0

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2024