NLA Achieves Joint Accreditation

December 7, 2017 — The National Lipid Association (NLA) was recently awarded accredited provider status for Joint Accreditation in Inter-professional Continuing Education. Joint Accreditation offers organizations such as the NLA the opportunity to be simultaneously accredited to provide medical, pharmacy, and nursing continuing education through a unified set of accreditation standards. The NLA now joins a growing list of organizations offering joint accreditation including medical societies, health systems, universities, medical education companies, and others. The NLA adds this designation to its growing list of accomplishments in the past few years including designation as an accredited provider through the Commission on Dietetic Registration and Accreditation with Commendation status from the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME).

Launched in 2009, Joint Accreditation is a collaboration of the ACCME, the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Joint Accreditation establishes the standards for education providers to deliver inter-professional continuing education (IPCE) planned by the healthcare team for the healthcare team. IPCE is defined as when participants from two or more professions learn with, from, and about each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes.

Jointly accredited continuing education providers must meet rigorous standards for educational quality and independence. With the joint accreditation initiative, the ACCME, the ACPE, and the ANCC seek to assure the public that healthcare teams receive education that is designed to be independent, free from commercial bias, based on valid content, and effective in improving the quality and safety of care delivered by the team. A new report based on the 2016 Joint Accreditation Leadership Summit shows how inter-professional continuing education contributes to improving healthcare team collaboration and patient care. By the Team for the Team: Evolving Interprofessional Continuing Education for Optimal Patient Care – Report from the 2016 Joint Accreditation Leadership Summit includes best practices, challenges, case examples, key recommendations, and data about the value and impact of IPCE. The NLA was represented at the summit and is featured in the report as an one example of best practices in continuing education.

Through designation as a Jointly Accredited provider, the NLA is better positioned to deliver on its mission to enhance the practice of lipid management in clinical medicine.