Quality improvement requirements for ABA MOCA program
Medical societies and other healthcare organizations offering quality educational activities to enable physicians to fulfill the requirements of our Maintenance of Certification in Anesthesiology (MOCA®) program may submit a proposal for their educational activities to be considered for approval.
ABOUT MOCA
MOCA is a 10-year program designed to enable physicians to demonstrate their commitment to quality clinical outcomes and patient safety. MOCA offers ABA board-certified anesthesiologists (i.e., diplomates) the opportunity to participate in a four-part process for continual learning, while advancing the standard of specialty medical care. The four-part program includes:
- Medical Licensure
- CME activities
- MOCA Minute
- Quality Improvement
These four components of MOCA are designed to provide assessments of six general competencies: patient care, medical knowledge, practice-based learning and improvement, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, and systems-based practice.
EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES FOR FULFILLMENT OF MOCA REQUIREMENTS
We may approve activities that:
- Provide relevance to physician practice.
- Allow physicians to assess the quality of their care relative to the chosen topic for a small consecutive sample of their daily work and compare their performance to peers and to benchmark data.
- Use standard quality improvement methods and inform physicians of the current best knowledge applicable to the topic and the current best knowledge of how other physicians have improved performance.
- Help physicians develop an action plan based on their own assessment of their performance and lead them through a project to improve performance including a reassessment later. Please review the full Guidelines for Assessment of Physician Practice Performance as set forth by the American Board of Medical Specialties in ATTACHMENT A of this document.
The fact that an educational sponsor’s activity meets all the above stated requirements is not a guarantee that an activity will be accepted, rather the decision to accept the activity is subject to the sole discretion of the ABA. All activity applications that are not selected will be returned in its entirety to the educational sponsor and no parts of the activity application will be used without the educational sponsor’s written permission. Notwithstanding, it is possible that activity applicants may present similar proposals and while one activity application may not be accepted, another activity application with similar features may be used. Thus, all educational sponsors must agree that they may not claim any proprietary rights or interests by virtue of similar submissions being made and the ABA selecting one such activity applicant over another. We reserve the right to charge a fee for review of activities.
PROCESS FOR ACTIVITY SUBMISSION
To submit your organization’s activity to the ABA for approval:
- Review the activity requirements.
- Complete and submit the MOCA QI activity application.
DECISION PROCESS AND TIMELINE
We review applications on a first-come, first-served basis. The review and approval process may take up to 10 weeks. During this time, we may request additional information. Once a final decision is reached, the sponsor will be notified. If an activity application is approved, the sponsor will be required to sign a written agreement that specifies the terms of the arrangement with the ABA. The sponsor is responsible for the development and administration costs of the activity and must submit a final report diplomates’ activity completion. This includes collecting ABA identification numbers from course participants and sending them to us with the completion information.