Need clarification regarding "participants" vs "Number of physicians who completed activity"

Accreditation - Rules and Regulations
1

On pages where ACCME defines participants they describe how to define physician and non-physician participants.

On the PARS site, the language used is “Number of physicians who completed activity.”

This has led to confusion for me.

How does ACCME define “completed?” For example, does registration or attendance alone without completing an evaluation or credit claiming define completion?

If you could please consider the following scenarios, assuming a calendar-year reporting cycle, and let me know if the participant should be counted it would be much appreciated!

  1. A physician attends a one-day live activity on July 1, 2016. He or she attends and stays all day but doesn’t fill out the evaluation or claim credit ever. Should this participant be counted in the 2016 reporting year?

  2. A physician attends a one-day live activity on July 1, 2016. He or she attends and stays all day but forgets and then fills out the evaluation and claims credit in 2017. Should this participant be counted in the 2016 reporting year?

2a) In scenario 3, the live event was held in the 2016 reporting year. Should the activity be reported again in 2017 if the attendee completes the evaluation and asks for credit in 2017 even though the course happened in the 2016 reporting year?

2a.1) If so, how should the activity dates be handled when reporting to PARS?

2a.2) If so to 2a, how long after the activity can the attendee allowed to claim credit?

  1. A physician attends a one-day live activity on July 1, 2016. He or she attends and stays all day but forgets and then fills out the evaluation in 2016 but does not claim credit.
2

I reached out to ACCME and here is what they said.

Accredited providers should report those who complete some or all of an activity for the Physician Participants and Other Learner counts. It is not necessary that they claim credit. Provider should not count those who simply access an activity (for example “click on it”) as participants unless they can verify that some of the activity was completed.

  1. A physician attends a one-day live activity on July 1, 2016. He or she attends and stays all day but doesn’t fill out the evaluation or claim credit ever. Should this participant be counted in the 2016 reporting year? Yes

  2. A physician attends a one-day live activity on July 1, 2016. He or she attends and stays all day but forgets and then fills out the evaluation and claims credit in 2017. Should this participant be counted in the 2016 reporting year? Yes

2a) In scenario 3, the live event was held in the 2016 reporting year. Should the activity be reported again in 2017 if the attendee completes the evaluation and asks for credit in 2017 even though the course happened in the 2016 reporting year? No. Only activities made available in a reporting year are reported in a reporting year. The provider would have reported the participation in 2016.

2a.1) If so, how should the activity dates be handled when reporting to PARS? See above.

2a.2) If so to 2a, how long after the activity can the attendee allowed to claim credit? See above.

  1. A physician attends a one-day live activity on July 1, 2016. He or she attends and stays all day but forgets and then fills out the evaluation in 2016 but does not claim credit. See above.
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