Cleveland Clinic Backs Quiz to Keep Docs Sharp

By challenging physicians to be The SmartestDoc, MDLinx and the Cleveland Clinic are using competition to promote education.

Stephen Smith

On Tuesday, M3 USA’s MDLinx, a pharma advertising supported informational website for physicians, launched a new quiz – The SmartestDoc – for internal medicine and family physicians. In collaboration with MDLinx, the Cleveland Clinic is providing educational materials from its Center for Continuing Education to be used in the quiz, which tests a physician’s knowledge of recent medical literature, practice-related issues, and other med ed topics. While the quiz itself isn’t new, the Cleveland Clinic’s participation and provision of materials will bring new physicians into the competition.

The five-question quiz, which hopes to reach roughly 200,000 US docs in the first 90 days, allows registered physicians to quiz themselves once a day, and then see how their scores shape up against other physicians regionally and nationally. Anyone can take the daily quiz, and revisit past quizzes for review, but only verified physicians are included in the leaderboard. Each month, the doc with the most points will receive a certificate deeming him or her the “Smartest Family Physician.” Physicians can also form teams of five and compete against other teams. Quizzes are ranked by difficulty, and physicians can evaluate their strengths according to different practice areas. “There are performance pages – private to the physician – that measure expertise levels, and how they stack up against the community,” says Stephen Smith, chief marketing officer at M3, owner of MDLinx.

Smith says that content contributions from the Cleveland Clinic augment the quiz by giving it “a better blend…in addition to the new medical literature, there’s now enduring educational materials. It’s the mix of material that provides a robust learning environment.” Staff editors at MDLinx convert the materials received from the Cleveland Clinic into quiz questions.

As of now, the quizzes don’t offer CME credits, but Smith says he hopes to add this capability in the future. MDLinx has had preliminary discussions about integrating the quiz into live meetings as well as a certification review course, according to Smith.