The Center for Medical Education, Inc.

Founded in 1977, and based in Creamery, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, the organization has been providing its subscribers and course participants with a variety of state-of-the-art continuing medical education resources. Annually over 5000 physicians participate in one of our educational programs and in excess of 90,000 CME credits are earned. Next to the American College of Emergency Physicians, it is believed that The Center for Medical Education is the largest provider of emergency medicine CME in the country. In addition to sponsoring our own courses, we also furnish support services for a variety of other CME course providers.

Emergency Medical Abstracts Publication

The first educational endeavor of "The Center" was emergency medical abstracts. Since 1977, the service has been providing its 4000+ subscribers with original abstracts culled from over 600 refereed medical journals. In addition to the abstracts, subscribers receive a 4-page essay focusing on a narrow, leading-edge topic and a 90-minute audiocassette on which the editors summarize the abstracts and add their clinical perspective. The publication is available in printed, computerized and Internet versions and CME credit is provided by the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Primary Care Medical Abstracts

Identical in format to Emergency Medical Abstracts, PCMA was begun to meet the informational needs of primary care physicians. With a CME program accredited by the Michigan State University School of Human Medicine, subscribers who participate in the optional CME program can earn 4 AAFP and AMA Category I credits monthly.

CME Courses

In 1980 the first of a series of literature-based courses was presented by The Center for Medical Education based on the Emergency Medical Abstract database. Since that time over 250 such courses have been provided with attendance exceeding 20,000. Courses have been conducted throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. Over the years we've expanded our seminar offerings to include courses based on the Primary Care Medical Abstracts database, have joint ventured on other courses (see the National Emergency Medicine Board Review course) and have furnished support services for a variety of other course providers.

EDITS Software

The computing division of The Center for Medical Education, known as CQ Systems, has created two software programs to optimize the operation of emergency departments. Currently the programs are used by over 50 hospitals in the United States including several major universities. Two programs are available -- a data acquisition and management program called EDITS Data and a chart scanning and distribution program called EDITS Scan.