The ACC held a successful and very dynamic meeting of some of the College’s most valuable educators to envision the "meeting of the future." The idea of LEAD was envisioned by ACC staff and Education Oversight Committee Chair Pat O’Gara, M.D., F.A.C.C., to consider how to transform the meetings of today for the needs of physicians of the future.

We’ve been trying to expand our capabilities of conducting our “Emerging Faculty” program, originally developed by Valentin Fuster, M.D., M.A.C.C., and others to help train Fellows in Training and young cardiologists to become excellent presenters. But now we realize we need to rethink how to present the best possible meetings in the future — ones that will attract people out of their offices in difficult economic times — for even those of us who have been in this business for decades.

One exciting new capacity for making meeting attendance more compelling in the immediate future relates to the NCDR^® and PINNACLE™. We are not far from being able to give attendees at educational sessions a profile of their own practice performance with respect to the topic at hand, allowing them to compare how their institution or practice fares against others. That’s a new level of relevance that will truly be exciting. Based on the enthusiasm of the attendees I encountered as they were completing the program, I’m sure there are quite a few other revelations they will be sharing soon.

This LEAD meeting was the prelude for the in person ACC Education Oversight Committee at Heart House that discussed how the quality of care registries will be integrated with the lifelong learning portfolios, MOC (maintenance of certification) systems and performance improvement systems. We now envision through the Education Oversight Committee a spectrum of measurement tools that improve personal and practice and hospital proficiency with improvement of patient care and outcomes in a fully coordinated fashion. Heady stuff.

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