Submitting a DPC activity: priority orientations, scoping sheets and recognised methods

Registration with the national DPC agency opens a right: the right to submit activities. It creates none. And a submitted activity is not simply a course put online: it is a constrained object, which must sit within a thematic framework written in advance and rest on a recognised method. Understanding both constraints before designing saves rewriting.

First constraint: the priority orientation

You do not choose your topic freely. A DPC activity must attach to a priority orientation in force.

These orientations are set out in binding scoping sheets. Each defines the precise scope of the orientation, the audience or audiences targeted, and the pedagogical expectations in terms of activity type, format and breakdown of topics. “Binding” is not decorative: the sheet works as a specification, and an activity that departs from it does not fit the framework.

The methodological consequence is simple but often ignored: read the scoping sheet before designing, not after writing the programme. Many providers coming from vocational training do the opposite — they start from their expertise, build content, then look for an orientation to fit it into. That is the surest way to produce a lopsided activity that satisfies neither the framework nor the original intent.

Where the orientations calendar stands

The calendar has been extended several times, and it is worth having the exact chronology in mind.

The multi-year priority orientations were set for the years 2023 to 2025. They were first extended to 2026 by an order of 23 June 2025 amending the order of 7 September 2022 that had established them. A second extension came through an order of 3 June 2026, published in the Official Journal on 6 June 2026: published activities remain valid until 31 December 2027.

For a provider, that is first of all good news for planning. The scoping sheets are unchanged, the existing catalogue does not lapse, and activities already published keep their validity. It is not a reason to stop watching the file: the orientations applying beyond that point have not been settled to date, and a provider building a substantial offering today has every reason to follow the Agency’s publications.

Second constraint: the type of activity and the method

DPC is not limited to training. Since the 2009 reform that brought evaluation of professional practice and continuing training under one roof, the scheme combines three strands, plus a composite form:

Type	What it aims at
Continuing training (FC)	Updating or deepening knowledge
Evaluation of professional practice (EPP)	Examining one’s actual practice and improving it
Risk management (GDR)	Identifying, prioritising, preventing, correcting and evaluating risks inherent in care
Integrated programme	Combining several of the above within a single pathway

Alongside the type sits the requirement of method. The French national health authority (HAS) publishes the list of recognised methods: clinical audit, appropriateness review, morbidity and mortality review, indicator monitoring, healthcare simulation, among others. A submitted activity must attach to one of them.

The choice is not neutral for the economics of your offering: the type and format chosen — in person, virtual classroom, non-classroom — feed into the hourly funding rates that each professional section sets for its own profession.

Format is not a detail: what research says

It is tempting to treat the method requirement as a formality and pick whichever method is cheapest to run. The literature suggests doing the opposite, because format is precisely the variable that determines the effect.

The meta-analysis by David A. Cook and colleagues, published in JAMA in 2011 (reference), pooled several hundred studies evaluating healthcare simulation. Compared with no intervention, simulation is associated with large effects on professionals’ knowledge, skills and behaviour, and with moderate effects on patient-related outcomes.

That result illuminates the logic of the French scheme: if simulation is among the recognised methods, it is not out of enthusiasm for modern pedagogy but because its effect is documented. The reasoning applies more broadly — choosing a method means choosing a level of effect, and that is what the commission reads in your file.

What submission does not guarantee

Three points to avoid disappointment.

Submitting is not being funded. Agency funding covers health professionals working as self-employed practitioners under the state health-insurance agreement and salaried staff of contracted health centres. A professional outside that scope can attend your activity and validate their obligation, but their funding will come through another channel — employer, sector funding body, or public hospital service arrangements.

A published offering has to live. Provider registration has no duration set by the regulations, but it can be withdrawn if the provider stops meeting the criteria guaranteeing the quality of its activities. A registered provider that submits nothing maintains nothing.

Content stays under the commissions’ eye. The scientific-validity requirement does not stop at initial registration: it applies to the activities themselves. The corresponding criteria are set out in our article on the registration criteria and scientific-commission assessment.

The design order that works

1. Choose the priority orientation among those in force, based on your genuine standing rather than the commercial appeal of the topic.
2. Read the scoping sheet in full: scope, audiences, expected type, format, breakdown of topics. That is your specification.
3. Choose the type and method knowing their effects — and check that the choice matches what the sheet expects.
4. Design the activity following the announced breakdown, with explicit sourcing of content.
5. Plan the evaluation of the activity at design stage, not after the first session.
6. Submit on the platform and follow what becomes of the activity.

If your organisation is not yet registered, that is where to start: our article on the ANDPC registration procedure sets out the route and the deadlines.

Take action

Take the priority orientation you are aiming at and compare its scoping sheet, line by line, with the programme you had in mind: that exercise reveals in an hour the gaps a failed submission would take three months to expose. The full profile of the scheme is here: Registration as a DPC provider.