Making CME Work Better for Physicians: Q&A with Dr. Scott Hershman

LACMA is pleased to welcome Vinea CME as a new sponsor and resource partner supporting physicians with a more practical approach to continuing medical education. In this Q&A, Vinea co-founder Scott Hershman, MD, FACEHP, CHCP, Vice President of Education and Professional Development at the California Academy of Family Physicians, discusses why the current CME landscape can feel fragmented and burdensome for physicians, how those challenges affect professional satisfaction, and how platforms like Vinea are working to make CME more relevant, accessible, and easier to manage.

Q: Does the Continuing Medical Education (CME) “system” in U.S. healthcare actually work for today’s physicians?

A: Plainly stated, it doesn’t. The frustrations physicians have shared for years is well documented, structural, and widely shared across specialties. The core issues lie with a highly fragmented, multi-layered bureaucracy because CME isn’t one system, it’s a variety of overlapping systems stacked on top of each other.

Imagine working within a specialty managing an independent practice with an onslaught of regulations, documentation, legal, staffing, financial and reimbursement requirements coupled with CME requirements that often span state boards, specialty boards, hospitals, and DEA rules simultaneously. If a physician is part of a large medical group, hospital or integrated health system, he/she still faces painful state medical licensing board CME requirements with no common standard, and federal entities, state and medical specialty boards may all require overlapping CME — meaning a doctor might complete the same type of course multiple times just to satisfy different authorities.

The AMA itself acknowledged this at its 2024 Interim Meeting, calling the situation needlessly cumbersome. AMA Trustee Melissa Garretson, MD put it plainly: "Right now, reporting is entirely time-consuming and repetitive. If we can streamline the CME process and adopt standardized reporting, physicians can focus on what matters most — providing high-quality care to patients."

Q: How Does a Fractured CME Process Impact Physician Wellness and Profession Satisfaction?

A: Many physicians end up maintaining spreadsheets, juggling multiple portals, and setting their own reminders just to avoid missing a renewal window. A whole category of software products have emerged to create more efficiency, but are they?

It's worth noting that CME doesn't sit in isolation. Physician burnout, while declining from a COVID-era peak of 62.8% to 43.2% in 2024, remains a significant crisis — with documentation burden, EHR inefficiencies, prior authorizations, and administrative paperwork cited as leading drivers. CME adds to this pile, often having to be completed during evenings and weekends, eating into the personal time that's already thin.

Q: We Often Hear About Bringing Joy Back to Medicine. How Does a Complicated CME System Erode That Joy?

A: The honest answer on whether doctors enjoy CME is rarely in its mandatory form. The system is designed around compliance and credit hours, not curiosity or clinical growth. Studies have identified persistent challenges including fragmented learning experiences, outdated curricula, lack of learner initiative, and an excessive focus on earning credits rather than genuinely absorbing new knowledge. Physicians are independent, self-directed professionals, and a check-box system runs counter to how they learn best.

That said, some physicians may “enjoy” CME when it's well-designed — interactive conferences, specialty-specific deep dives, or peer-discussion formats tend to get much better reception than generic online modules.

Q: Is CME Documentation Relevant to the Physicians Specialty?

A: More often than not, no. For many physicians, continuing medical education inconvenient and cumbersome. Mandatory topics like opioid prescribing or end-of-life communication may feel disconnected from, say, a cardiologist's daily workload — though defenders argue these have broader public health value.

Q: Technology is Changing the Status Quo

A: The CME system as currently structured is genuinely difficult to manage and navigate, frequently criticized as irrelevant and poorly designed for retention, and enjoyed mostly in spite of its structure rather than because of it. The underlying goal — keeping physicians current — is sound, but the delivery mechanism is widely seen as an administrative burden layered on top of an already over-burdened profession.

Q: What Does Vinea Offer That is Unique, Relevant and Needed?

A: Vinea CME was developed by physicians and unlike most CME platforms built by education companies or health systems, Vinea was founded by veteran physicians who experienced the frustration of a fragmented CME and credentialing system firsthand. That origin shapes the product philosophy — they're solving for the user, not the institution.

Q: What Are the Features of Vinea’s CME System?

A: At the heart of the system is microlearning designed for a doctor's actual day so rather than long-form modules or all-day conferences, Vinea uses bite-sized, sequenced modules that deliver learning at a personalized pace — explicitly designed to fit into gaps between patient cases and commutes, not carved-out blocks of personal time.

Another distinctive feature of the Vinea CME System is earning CME credits through reflection — not extra work. This is perhaps their most distinctive idea. Integrated prompts turn every learning opportunity into meaningful CME credits in real-time — meaning clinical insights from actual patient care can be converted into formal CME through journaling/reflection tools, rather than requiring a separate educational activity. Most platforms treat CME as something done apart from clinical work; Vinea tries to blur that line.

Q: Why One Single Source of “Truth” is Essential

A: As a physician I can share that intelligent recommendations and searches connect clinicians to the exact courses they need, with filters by specialty, credit type, and urgency — or plain-English searches. This is a step beyond the static catalogs most CME platforms offer and the deployment of One dashboard for everything.

One dashboard covers all state boards, specialties, and fund tracking — with instant one-click uploads. That directly attacks the fragmentation problem (juggling multiple state portals, spreadsheets, etc.) that the AMA has publicly flagged as a major pain point.

Q: What About Security?

A: It’s vital for physicians to use a platform that integrates security features such as MedCV, which gives physicians a secure, portable professional profile that supports privileging — connecting CME completion directly to credentialing workflows, which are typically separate, disconnected systems.

Vinea CME Joins LACMA

LACMA is pleased to welcome Vinea as a new resource partner supporting physicians who want a more practical way to manage continuing medical education.

For many physicians, CME is not just about learning. It is also about tracking requirements, documenting completion, meeting renewal deadlines, and keeping pace with multiple boards, employers, and credentialing systems. Vinea was created to help make that process easier to manage, while keeping physicians connected to relevant learning opportunities that fit into the realities of clinical practice.

LACMA members who would like to learn more about Vinea CME, including its approach to peer communities, case-based learning, live discussion threads, and mentorship circles, may contact Mark Iorio at: mark.irorio@vinea.pro