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Rachel Lupole joined OCME in May 2024 with 20 years of professional experience in developing, leading, and mentoring education programs. Rachel Lupole has also served as an instructor, career coach, and educational consultant across corporate and nonprofit sectors, including healthcare and workforce development. Her career has been dedicated to creating and delivering career-enhancing programs that elevate educators, empower learners, and foster career growth. She is passionate about fostering partnerships that yield mutual benefits both within and beyond organizational boundaries.

The Portfolio Manager role in OCME was created to oversee the administration and operations of our health profession education programs.

Rachel manages the following for our OCME office:

• Leading a team of conference managers, overseeing the scheduling, development, and contracting of continuing education (CE) activities.
• Supervising the planning, accreditation, execution, and close-out of live events, on-demand learning, and regularly scheduled series.
• Identifying and assessing new product or service opportunities within a defined scope.
• Monitoring market trends, assessing learner needs, and implementing promotional strategies to expand the reach of UCSF continuing education programs
• Collaborating with course faculty to address (CE) activities concerns, developing proactive solutions, and strategizing innovative approaches to meet evolving CME needs.

Our office is thrilled to announce Gaelen Lombard has been promoted to the role of Lead Conference Manager. This promotion is a testament to Gaelen’s outstanding dedication, expertise, and invaluable contributions to our conference management team and to UCSF over the years.

In her new role, Gaelen will mentor and consult with the conference management team, collaborate closely with Portfolio Manager, offering invaluable insights and expertise, and help standardize operating procedures for the team.

The lead conference manager will have centralized oversight of key functions.

Gaelen facilitates the following for our OCME office:

• Collaborate on site selection and venue contracting to optimize buying power and streamline contracts.
• Evaluate and select new vendors for common products and services.
• Support process improvement efforts related to the team’s functions.
• Develop and standardize operating procedures for the team’s tasks.
• Provide training and special assistance for new team members or unique planning situations.
• Advise the Portfolio Manager on team-specific conference management needs.

We have also welcomed two new conference managers Rob Corbett and Niharika Patel to our planning team, strategically selected to provide crucial support within our department.

Gaelen Lombard (UCSF since 2011) – Lead Conference Manager 

Dawn Bohlmann (UCSF since 2007) – Senior Conference Manager 

Philina Lim (UCSF since 2018) – Senior Conference Manager 

Sari Ogden (UCSF since 2019) – Senior Conference Manager

Rob Corbett (UCSF April 2024) – Conference Manager 

Niharika Patel (UCSF April 2024, previous work with UC Berkeley) – Conference Manager

Crystal Mask-Caraway joined our team as a new Accreditation Analyst as of January 2025.

Callie McGonagle has joined our team as a new Financial Analyst as of February 2025.

The Office of CME has identified several factors affecting conference planning and budgets in the post-pandemic era. These include:

• Increased costs for hotel rooms, meeting space, venue rentals and food & beverage contracts 
• Reduction in commercial grant funds and available commercial support moving forward.
• Limited availability for hotel venue dates for CE courses, many booking quickly up to 2 years in advance.
• On-campus CE course locations are also heavily booked, with schedules filling up 18 months ahead, requiring early scheduling. 

To address these challenges, OCME will be working even more closely and collaboratively with UCSF course faculty . We are focused on enhancing budget proposals, revitalizing course offerings, and streamlining internal operations for greater efficiency.

OCME has been using multiple technology systems to manage continuing education: a registration platform (Configio), an accreditation and activity management platform (HighMarks), a survey platform for evaluations (Qualtrics), and learning management platform(s) for on-demand learning.

OCME has begun the transition to a new system, CloudCME, which will integrate the functionalities of all these systems and provide additional features to planners and learners.

• For planners, the CloudCME portal will manage the submission of accreditation applications, enhance online reviews, simplify the collection of learner and speaker information (including disclosures, mitigation forms, and other custom forms), provide marketing tools, allow access to participant data associated with educational activities, and assist with budgeting.
• For learners, the CloudCME portal will enable registration, payment, online learning access, evaluations, credit claims, certificates, and transcripts to all be accessible in a single system with a single login. For UCSF staff and faculty, login will be further streamlined by single sign-on via MyAccess.

Starting this fall, we will require a signed Educational Activity Agreement for any continuing education activity beginning after January 1, 2025. Each Educational Activity Agreement delineates roles, responsibilities, regulations, and costs for educational activities offered in coordination with OCME. UCSF OCME will send the agreement via Docusign to Program directors and Department Chairs. If you receive an Educational Activity Agreement, please review and sign this agreement as soon as possible. Feel free to reach out with any questions to Tym Peters, Administrative Director of OCME, or Lorriana Leard, MD, Associate Dean of CME.

For those activities that utilize OCME’s Registration and Learner Support Services, we provide a secure online registration portal and payment processing. This includes standard or customized registration forms; options for group registration, discount codes, early-bird and other tiered pricing options; registrant tracking; cancellation and refund management; data reporting; as well as customer service, technical support, and preparation of registration materials.

As of January 1, 2025, OCME has transitioned to using an external printing service for all name badges.

UCSF OCME is proud to be a Joint Accredited Provider for Interprofessional Continuing Education (IPCE). Program Directors, Administrators, and Planners are encouraged to consider how their educational activities can be designed for all members of the healthcare team. Thus, we encourage the planning committee members to represent multiple health professions and to create educational content that promotes improvements in communication and teamwork. At this time, UCSF OCME is accredited to provide professional continuing education credit to:

• Physicians (ACCME)
• Nurses (BRN/AANC)
• Advanced practice professionals (NPs and PAs – AANC and AAPA)
• Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians (ACPE)
• Dentists (ADA)
• Psychologists (APA)
• Behavioral Health Professionals (AWSB)
• Athletic Trainers (BOC).

These accreditations are now possible through a single application process!

Speaking of applications, please note that OCME updated the submission deadlines for credit requests. Please keep these in mind as you begin planning for future educational activities.

New Educational Activity Credit Requests

• Regularly Scheduled Series (RSS) and Enduring Material Activity Types

Deadline: 4 months before start date

• Live, Hybrid, and Other Activity Types

Deadline: 9 months before start date

Renewal Educational Activity Credit Requests

• Regularly Scheduled Series (RSS) and Enduring Material Activity Types

Deadline: 3 months before start date

• Live, Hybrid, and Other Activity Types

Deadline: 6 months before start date

Find more accreditation information here: https://meded.ucsf.edu/cme/information-planners-and-coordinators/accreditation-and-educational-development

In addition to providing valuable information, training materials, and forms for planning continuing education, OCME’s Continuing Education (CE) Portal also contains learner credit certificates and transcripts. As of January 1, 2025, OCME will no longer accept registrant or attendee data from external sources (e.g. final participant lists cannot be uploaded into the system.) Learners should self-claim by clicking a link or scanning a QR code at the end of the educational activity to automatically record their credit in the OCME CE Portal system. Alternatively, the administrator or planner can add participants to the OCME CE Portal and “check them in” to log their credit claims. Certificates and transcripts are accessible from the learner’s CE Portal profile.

For more information, see Standards, Documents, Templates, Closing Checklists, and Tutorial Videos on the CE Portal site.

The Learner Experience Team supports registration, responds to learner inquiries, manages certificate requests, and provides additional support to improve the educational experience for learners. This newly formed team is working to standardize and improve services for our learners, planners, and other stakeholders. They have designed a new ticketing system to improve customer support. If a learner has a question or needs assistance, please direct them to this website to Submit a Help Ticket

View upcoming courses on the UCSF CME website: cme.ucsf.edu