Immediate past president Jann Balmer was a champion throughout the meeting for the Alliance’s new strategic plan, and on Saturday morning she answered some of the questions people already have been asking, and encouraged all to keep the questions coming.

She also said a name change was definitely under consideration, and again encouraged members to chime in with their ideas (which a few on the Twitter backchannel already have been tweeting about). There were no guarantees on the ifs and whens, but she did say that members would get to vote on any new name that was proposed.

I have to applaud the Alliance for coming up with what I think is a really forward-thinking, comprehensive-yet-flexible plan to not just take the organization into the future, but to give it the will and ability to get in front of the changes we talked about all week that are transforming CME, from interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary learning, to new technologies, to an outcomes focus, to better use of adult learning strategies … you get the point. And they’re promoting it as well as it could possibly be promoted, from a prominent spot on the home page to the bingo card with the main eight points on it conferees got at registration, to the signs around the conference areas. If people aren’t getting the message, well, I don’t see what more could be done to get it across.

Bravo to all involved in drafting the new plan, and to those who will see it through implementation, and to the vocal members who are already helping to continue to shape it into a plan that will take this organization where it, and the enterprise, needs to go.

And I’d like to give another big shout-out to everyone involved in putting this year’s conference together. I haven’t felt such good energy, such a positive buzz, or heard so many good comments about the programming, as I did this year. I can’t wait to see what you come up with next!

Among the hot topics in CME today — from REMS to perceptions of bias to Maintenance of Certification Part IV — the one that left me feeling a bit queasy from the final Alliance for CME plenary session Saturday morning was a presentation on cognitive bias and errors in diagnosis, by Hilary Schmidt, PhD. She cited data about the scary high percentage of hospital admissions that involved missed diagnoses, patients with acute or chronic conditions who didn’t get the right care (it sounds like the AHRQ Web site has a lot of good info on this topic). When she asked us how many in the audience had a medical error affect our or a loved one’s life, I swear almost half of us raised our hands.

She then showed us just how cognitive bias can factor into missed or misdiagnoses by showing just how easy it is for humans to miss really obvious things, like an airplane engine and a moondancing bear, something called cognitive blindness. And how the power of suggestion can factor into perceptions of a situation.

The good news is that CME can help to reduce these types of errors. The more often we’re made aware of cognitive blindness and inattention, the less likely we are to get blindsided by it. Perfect concept for a performance-improvement CME program…if anyone’s doing it, I’d love to hear about it.