Memorial day weekend (#MDW) is an important time to reflect on all of those who have served and have given the ultimate sacrifice for our way of life.  This is not a political statement; it is important we remember why we have our freedoms.  But it is also a time in my life to remember all of those who serve others, including those in healthcare.  Unfortunately, this weekend is also associated with many clinicians as a time to “catch up” on all those looming deadlines with some state licenses due for renewal.

My Journey with Mocingbird became crystalized in 2018 when I was notified by one of my administrative support staff that I had 8 hours of opioid training due on June 1st.  She went out of her way to research the requirements for me and my partners at Ortho RI and deliver about 20 different links to education that would cumulatively satisfy the requirement.  However, she had no idea if any of the content was good, how much it cost, and had no visibility into the relevance to orthopedic surgery (never mind ortho spine).  I did the required hours, but I can’t say that I learned one thing that weekend.

This year I am all caught up and have been for a little while now.  But I had the opportunity to speak with one of the new Rheumatologists at Ortho RI who only found out our organization was on the Mocingbird platform the Friday going into MDW.  She worked for many years in the multi-hospital academic system in Providence RI where she was used to being told, “That is the doctor's problem.”  In only using Mocingbird for one day, she was able to easily find what requirements were incomplete and the education that needed to be done, with complete visibility into relevance and cost.  That is the value we aim to deliver.  We cannot continue to accept a continuing education ecosystem that promotes box-checking.  We have important things to learn and only so many hours in the day.  The education needs to have an impact on my practice and my outcomes. 

Too many clinicians sacrifice unnecessary time and money to complete the required education, just to keep taking care of their community.  And while these sacrifices cannot be compared to those made by the soldiers we honor this weekend; we need to do better for our medical professionals.  We need infrastructure that allows them to learn in real time, on the go, with major impact on their practice and the lowest cost possible.  We at Mocingbird are here to shine a light on this in healthcare and be part of that solution.

Author: Dr. Ian Madom, CEO and Co-Founder of Mocingbird, Orthopedic Spine Surgeon.


 Mocingbird is a cloud-based platform that improves medicine and clinician well-being by eliminating the chaos of ongoing credentialing and delivering high-impact Continuing Medical Education. For individual clinicians, we develop a one-stop solution to validate, track, document, and calculate the CME requirements for the maintenance of their professional licenses. For healthcare organizations, we provide a management tool that offers a real-time overview of compliance for risk mitigation. Mocingbird is based in Rhode Island and was founded by Orthopedic Spine Surgeon, Dr. Ian Madom and Interventional Cardiologist, Dr. George Fernaine.