Schools buy platforms the year before a survey and still assemble the DCI from folders. The records that run an MD program either exist while you teach, or they get reconstructed for the full survey, MSPE season, and the day the person who just knows leaves.
This guide is the operational list for MD-program deans and associate deans who are evaluating a platform. It is not a vendor scorecard, and it is not twenty-five questions padded to match an old brochure title. Each heading is a question your leadership meeting can put a name on. The first two sentences under it are the direct answer. A downloadable checklist (plain CSV) is linked at the end as a meeting handoff, not as the system of record.
Verified September 1, 2026 against LCME and AAMC. Sources at the end.
If you need the LCME operating model itself (owners, backward timeline, late-cycle failure points), use the companion Evidence article Managing LCME Accreditation. If you are already comparing named platforms, use the site's comparison guide rather than this list. This page stays on the questions a dean should be able to answer before anyone talks about software.
How to use these questions
Ask them of your own operation first. A vendor conversation that starts with "can you map to LCME" is a feature tour. A conversation that starts with "show me last cycle's DCI tables and this year's MSPE source files, in the system, with the people who own them" is diligence.
Put a name on each question. A shared drive is not a name.
A 30-second check. Open the shared drive from your last full survey. If you cannot name the edition of Functions and Structure it was built on, that is the first row on the checklist, and it is due this week, not in visit year.
Where does last cycle's DCI, self-study, and ISA actually live?
They should live in one access-controlled place that the current accreditation lead can open without calling someone who left. If they live in a personal drive, an email thread, or a folder named for a year, the next cycle starts as archaeology.
The LCME's published process runs on a named document set:
| Artifact | What it is | Clock |
|---|---|---|
| Functions and Structure of a Medical School | The standards | Edition matching the survey academic year |
| Data Collection Instrument | Academic-year workbook of performance against the standards | Living document, not a visit-year dig |
| Independent Student Analysis | Student-committee product | Findings exist before self-study synthesis |
| Institutional self-study | Evaluative synthesis of the DCI and ISA | Written after those two exist |
Established MD programs typically undergo a full survey every eight years, according to a 2016 Academic Medicine paper written by LCME secretariat staff and still hosted on lcme.org. Your school's actual next-visit date lives in your most recent LCME correspondence, and that date, not the typical interval, is the one to plan against. The LCME About page is explicit that the Secretariat and the publications on lcme.org are the only official sources on policies, procedures, and the intent of elements. A platform conversation that cannot point at those four artifacts, as your school actually produced them, is not yet a platform conversation.
Which edition of Functions and Structure governs our next survey?
The edition that matches your survey's academic year, pulled from lcme.org, not the copy saved during the last visit.
| Body | Clock | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Functions and Structure | Edition matching the survey academic year | The copy saved during the last visit |
| Publications layout | As of March 9, 2026, LCME publications are no longer collected on a single page; standards live under the Resources tab | One publications page |
| Change Log | last updated April 15, 2026 | A tracker that never diffs |
| Draft 2028-29 Functions and Structure | Public comment on the LCME homepage as of September 1, 2026 | The edition that governs your visit |
The Substantive Changes to Publications page, last updated April 15, 2026, exists because editions move, and a tracking spreadsheet built on last year's document will silently break.
On September 1, 2026 the LCME homepage was inviting public comment on a draft 2028-29 Functions and Structure. That is the point. Standards are a living publication. Confirm with your LCME survey contact which edition governs your visit when the answer is not explicit, and put a standing annual task on the accreditation lead to diff the Change Log against your tracker.
Is our DCI a living document or a visit-year reconstruction?
It has to be a living document if you want the next full survey to be a review rather than a dig. The Data Collection Instrument is the academic-year-specific workbook where the school documents performance against the standards. A 2016 Academic Medicine paper written by LCME secretariat staff, and still hosted on lcme.org, describes the DCI and self-study as the package the survey team reads before a several-day visit. The same paper found that internally inconsistent or only-descriptive packages were associated with more severe accreditation actions in the years it studied.
Do not treat those 2016 odds ratios as a current scoring rubric, and do not work from the paper's older standard codes. Do treat the operational finding as still useful: narratives that contradict tables, and a self-study that only describes what you do, are records problems you can prevent years before the visit. Ask any vendor to show how a table and the narrative that cites it stay attached to the same source, after the person who wrote both has left.
How will the ISA stay student-produced, and will it exist before the self-study?
Students produce it. The school supports logistics. The findings have to exist before self-study synthesis starts, because the self-study is supposed to respond to them, not append them.
| Owner | Clock | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Student ISA committee | Survey, analysis, and write-up while leaders are still enrolled | A dean's-office edit |
| Accreditation lead (logistics only) | Findings exist before self-study synthesis | An ISA appended after the self-study is already written |
A February 2026 LCME Secretariat webinar treated the Independent Student Analysis as a student-committee product whose report is incorporated into the school's DCI. Confirm the current ISA instructions on lcme.org; this page does not restate question counts or survey formats from a single school's slides.
The operational test is calendar, not software. Students graduate on a schedule that does not care about your visit date. If the ISA committee forms late, you will get a document you can file and not a set of findings you can address. Ask a vendor whether it can host a student-run survey without giving the dean's office an edit button on the findings. If the answer is a demo of "student engagement," keep walking.
Does our self-study evaluate problems, or only describe what we do?
It has to evaluate. The LCME-hosted 2016 paper treated a primarily descriptive self-study as an insufficient response. A self-study that claims no problems is not reassuring. It is implausible.
The question for a platform is not whether it can generate a narrative. It is whether the evidence behind each element (owners, artifacts, dates, the data the narrative cites) is complete enough that an honest assessment is possible. If the only way to write the self-study is to re-interview the whole school, you do not have a self-study process. You have a visit-year oral history.
Who is the named accreditation lead, and which elements have named owners?
There is a named lead with authority to escalate to the dean, and every element in the current standards has a named owner who can actually produce the data and the narrative. If the lead is somebody's fifth job, or the owner list is "the committee," the timeline is fiction.
This is the question that survives turnover. Write the owner list down. Update it when people leave. Ask a vendor to show element-level assignment, due dates, and submit / review / approve status as a living list, not a slide. The LCME About page reminds you that compliance is judged against Functions and Structure; the owner list is how a school makes that judgment someone's job.
Can we show where program objectives are taught and assessed from current records?
Yes, from the records you keep while you teach, or no, only after a special export project. A mapping you start when the visit is scheduled is a project, not a map. The March 2026 LCME strategic-revisioning slides still treat curricular content as a numbered standard with elements, which is another way of saying a survey team will ask where something is taught. If the answer is "we will map it when the visit is scheduled," you are buying a project, not a platform.
A 2016 LCME-hosted paper identified weak central curriculum management as a pattern associated with more severe actions in that era. Confirm the current element language in this year's Functions and Structure. Then ask the vendor to show coverage and gaps from your courses and sessions, with a person approving the links, not from a folder of last year's PDFs.
Can we show comparable education and assessment across instructional sites?
You can if the same records exist at every site, in the same structure, with named owners. You cannot if each clerkship site keeps its own spreadsheet and the dean's office reconciles them in visit year. The same 2016 LCME-hosted paper flagged comparability across instructional sites as a pattern that mattered in the decisions it studied. Current element numbers belong to this year's Functions and Structure, not to that paper's conversion chart.
The diligence question is practical. Pull two sites that teach the same clerkship. Can a stranger find the objectives, the required experiences, and the assessment methods for both, without emailing a coordinator? If not, mapping software will not invent that comparability.
What curriculum-inventory vocabulary do we still need, now that AAMC no longer collects via the Portal?
You still need a shared vocabulary for instructional and assessment methods, and a map you can search, because your own curriculum committee and your LCME package still need them. You do not need a portal file for a collection that has stopped.
| Object | Clock | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Curriculum Inventory Portal | Collection has ended | A current AAMC submission you should still buy for |
| Curriculum inventory standards and vocabulary lists | Still published for school and vendor use | A reason to keep a dead portal workflow |
| Curriculum SCOPE Survey (from 2023) | AAMC questionnaire from 2023 | A portal file |
The AAMC Curriculum Resources page states that the AAMC is no longer collecting curriculum mapping data via the Curriculum Inventory Portal, and that the curriculum inventory standards and vocabulary lists remain available for school and vendor use.
Treat "can you export CI to AAMC without reformatting" as a stale RFP line. Ask instead: do we tag sessions with a maintained method and keyword vocabulary; who owns the tags; and can we export a spreadsheet our curriculum office can actually read? The AAMC now collects program-level curriculum data through the Curriculum SCOPE Survey (from 2023). That is a questionnaire, not a reason to keep a dead portal workflow.
Can faculty and coordinators read the current curriculum map without an IT request?
If they cannot, the map is already stale. Faculty will not email IT to find out whether a concept is already taught, and coordinators will not wait two weeks to answer a committee question. The AAMC publishes a guidebook and keyword and methods lists because schools are expected to keep maps as working tools, not as accreditation props.
Ask the vendor to hand a course director a login (or an expiring review link) and have that person find their own sessions. If the demonstration requires a specialist, you are looking at a reporting warehouse, not a map people will maintain.
Can we assemble an MSPE from evaluation data, grades, and narratives already in the record?
If those pieces already live together, MSPE season is a review. If they live in a gradebook, an evaluation inbox, and a dean's-office Word folder, MSPE season is a reconstruction. The AAMC describes the MSPE as a comprehensive, standard document of a student's academic performance and professional development, prepared by student affairs, medical education, or the dean's office, for residency program directors.
Student-affairs offices that still build the letter from CSV exports and cohort graphs are not behind on software. They are telling you the source systems do not agree. Ask a vendor to start from last year's letter and walk backward to the evaluations and grades that fed it. If the walk requires a data project, budget the data project honestly. Do not buy a "MSPE button."
Does our MSPE follow the 2016 AAMC recommendations, including the 2026 Noteworthy Characteristics note?
The 2016 MSPE Task Force recommendations still guide national preparation. For the 2026 residency application cycle the AAMC is not changing the template. It does invite schools to place a brief clarifying statement immediately before Noteworthy Characteristics, explaining that the section reflects information contributed by the learner and reviewed by the medical school. Noteworthy Characteristics remain a maximum of three, presented as a bulleted list, each in two sentences or less.
| Body | Clock | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 MSPE Task Force recommendations | Still guide national preparation | A vendor-hard-coded letter shape |
| 2026 residency application cycle | AAMC is not changing the template | A reason to skip the clarifying statement |
| Noteworthy Characteristics | A maximum of three, bulleted, each in two sentences or less | An unbounded narrative |
| Phase 2 of the AAMC re-examine project | March 2026 through June 2027 | A finished national template rewrite |
Phase 2 of the AAMC's project to re-examine the MSPE runs from March 2026 through June 2027. A platform that hard-codes last year's letter shape as if it were a regulation will age badly. Ask how the school will edit the clarifying statement and the section structure when AAMC guidance moves, without a vendor change order.
How do we know clerkship evaluations are complete enough before MSPE drafting starts?
You know if completion is visible in the same system that holds the narratives, and if missing evaluations have a named owner before MSPE week. You do not know if someone discovers the holes while drafting letters.
This is not a request for a "real-time dashboard." It is a request for a completion list, by clerkship and by student, that student affairs can act on in the term the clerkship ran. Automatic assignment from a schedule is useful only if the schedule is the same record the evaluation used. If those are two systems, you have not automated anything. You have added a reconciliation job.
If we use AAMC Core EPAs as a local framework, can we show longitudinal evidence against them?
Only if you actually use them, and only if assessments map to them over time. The AAMC published 13 Core Entrustable Professional Activities for Entering Residency in May 2014. A 10-school pilot on implementing them in undergraduate medical education ended in 2021; the AAMC released a summary in September 2022. That is a member-organization framework, not LCME requirement text.
Do not let a vendor treat Core EPAs as a checkbox that substitutes for your own competencies or for LCME elements. If your school has adopted them, ask to see one student's evidence across years, against the EPAs you named, with the assessments that produced it. If you have not adopted them, do not buy a module that assumes you did.
Can advisors see a student's current progress without a custom export?
Advisors who have to request a report will not catch problems early. The record that feeds MSPE, competency committees, and academic support has to be the same record, readable under a role that is not "dean" and not "IT."
Ask who, today, can open a single student's evaluations, grades, required experiences, and outstanding documents without leaving the system and without waiting on a specialist. Then ask the vendor to duplicate that path in a demo with a masked student, not a slide of a "student success hub."
Can we see which required student documents are complete before a clerkship starts?
Site-required forms, trainings, and certifications either have an owner and a status before the rotation starts, or they become the coordinator's week. This is not an LCME publication fact. It is the operational condition under which clinical scheduling actually runs.
Ask for the list your clinical coordinators already keep. If it is a spreadsheet beside the scheduling tool, the diligence question is whether a platform can hold that list next to the assignment, by site, without a second login. If a vendor answers with "onboarding automation" and cannot show your sites' actual requirements, you are being sold a checklist template.
When a name, site, or requirement changes, how many other systems have to be updated by hand?
Count them, in a real meeting, with the people who do the typing. One change that fans out through the registrar, the evaluation system, the clinical scheduler, and the MSPE roster is not "integration." It is a defect you will rediscover every term.
This guide recommends a simple test: change a display name and a clerkship site for one masked student in the demo environment, then watch what else moves. If the vendor will not do that test, they already know the answer.
Will a vendor walk those records with our data, not a demo script?
Yes, or you are not in diligence yet. A platform that cannot load one course, one clerkship, and last year's MSPE source files into a working session is asking you to buy a story.
Bring one course to the conversation. Ask them to map it far enough that a gap is visible. Ask them to open an accreditation element and show the artifacts behind it. If the room fills with roadmap language, stop. The companion LCME operating guide and the comparison guide exists so this list does not have to become a vendor teardown.
What happens to our maps, evaluation history, and accreditation artifacts if we leave?
You get an export your next system can read, with the owners and dates still attached, or you do not. Find out which before you sign. Accreditation evidence that only exists inside a vendor's unique format becomes the next "LCME 2019" folder the day the contract ends.
Ask for the export formats in writing: curriculum inventory as a spreadsheet, evaluations, and the accreditation artifact set. Then have someone in your shop, not the vendor, open the files. This guide's own rule is that a platform you cannot leave is not an operating record. It is a hostage.
The checklist
Download the MD platform diligence checklist (CSV) and import it into Excel or Google Sheets. Every question above is a row, with columns for the suggested owner, what "good" looks like, status, and notes. The checklist is a handoff for a meeting (names in a file you can pass around). It is not the system of record. Put real names in the owner column at your next leadership meeting, before the next vendor call.
Where this lives in Medtrics
People → Process → Platform. Named owners run LCME element assignment as a standing process. The checklist is a handoff into that process, not the system of record. In Medtrics, start at Medical Schools.
Medtrics loads LCME elements as a native accreditation framework, assigns named owners with due dates to each element, and tracks submit, review, and approve status as a living list.
None of this replaces the operating model. The calendar, the owners, and the dean's sponsorship still do the work. A platform makes the boring structure durable when people leave.
Sources and status
This guide was verified on September 1, 2026 against the following sources. After publication, the current editions on lcme.org and aamc.org remain the only authoritative statements of any requirement or member-organization recommendation. That verification covers the document set and the AAMC facts named above. It does not cover the current text of every LCME element. Pull this year's Functions and Structure of a Medical School, Data Collection Instrument, and Independent Student Analysis instructions from lcme.org before you treat any summary, including this one, as a requirement. The current Functions and Structure and Data Collection Instrument files were not retrievable this run.
- LCME About: Secretariat and lcme.org publications are the only official sources on policies, procedures, and intent of elements; standards live in Functions and Structure of a Medical School. lcme.org/about
- LCME Publications: as of March 9, 2026, publications are not on one page; standards are under the Resources tab. lcme.org/publications
- LCME homepage: public comment on the draft 2028-29 Functions and Structure. lcme.org
- LCME Substantive Changes to Publications, updated April 15, 2026: Change Log for Functions and Structure and for each DCI. lcme.org/substantive-changes-to-publications
- Hunt, Migdal, Waechter, Barzansky, and Sabalis, Academic Medicine 2016, hosted on lcme.org: typical full survey every eight years; DCI and self-study as the survey-team package; insufficient (internally inconsistent or only-descriptive) responses associated with more severe actions in the study years. Dated 2016; not current element text. lcme.org PDF
- LCME strategic-revisioning slides, posted March 2026: 2025-26 Functions and Structure referenced; Standard 7 still the curricular-content unit. lcme.org PDF
- LCME Secretariat webinar slides, February 2026: ISA report incorporated into the DCI. School-specific survey mechanics not restated. lcme.org PDF
- AAMC Curriculum Resources: Curriculum Inventory Portal collection has ended; standards and vocabulary remain available; Curriculum SCOPE Survey from 2023. aamc.org/about-us/medical-education/curriculum-resources
- AAMC MSPE page: 2016 recommendations still guide; no 2026 template change; invited Noteworthy Characteristics clarifying statement; Phase 2 through June 2027. AAMC MSPE
- AAMC Core EPAs page: 13 Core EPAs published May 2014; 10-school pilot ended 2021; summary September 2022. AAMC Core EPAs
LCME, AAMC, and AMA are named descriptively. This article is an independent buyer's guide from Medtrics, not LCME or AAMC guidance, and nothing here promises any accreditation outcome. The work does that, or nothing does.