Membership

The American College of Cardiology is a national association. Please select Minnesota as your local chapter when you join or renew your dues.

The ACC strives to provide its members with the education, expert guidance, and professional network they need to optimize cardiovascular care and outcomes. Physician members paying full dues can access benefits worth over $3,500 in membership benefits, while care team members unlock benefits worth over $2,500 with their ACC membership.

Member Benefits

Education

  • The ACC has hundreds of FREE online educational opportunities – patient quizzes, certified patient cases, Meeting On Demand Programs and more – over 200 of which offer CME and/or MOC Credit and more than 50 of which offer CNE and/or AAPA credit
  • The ACC now has ten JACC Journals available for members, accessible digitally and as an audio summary podcast. There are also three JACC International editions available in Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. Physicians in the US also receive a print version of JACC.
  • The ACC continues to publish guidelines and regular updates on the latest in the field with newsletters on clinical topics as well as advocacy and broad-based CV content. We help you stay up to date on the latest developments in the field that affect you, your patients and your practice, including developments with health care policy and clinical care
  • The College launched and continues to update a COVID-19 Hub with the latest information and best practices to help cardiovascular professionals weather the ongoing pandemic
  • The ACC conducts regular webinars to help members with everything from:
    • Applying lessons learned from the pandemic to their practice
    • Securing funding for research
    • Leveraging social media to share and assimilate educational content
    • The growing role of AI in cardiology
    • Issues and challenges that arise when caring for older patients
    • Pursuing a more diverse, equitable and inclusive profession
    • Getting involved with advocacy on a local level
    • And MORE
  • Over 20 clinical topic hubs online provide news and guidelines information on the latest in cardiovascular medicine.
  • Members get deep discounts on ACC Education, saving hundreds on live course registration, on our ACC educational products online and often saving more than the cost of membership alone just on ACC Annual Scientific Session registration.

Career Advancement

  • The ACC is always working to provide members with specific interest or specialty areas an outlet to learn, network and advance priorities within their particular are of interest. Currently, the College is proud to offer its members the opportunity to join 21 Member Sections. These Sections provide a unique blend of forum and network, helping members with like interests to find one another and work on special-interest projects. Sections include:
  • Academic Cardiology
  • Adult Congenital & Pediatric Cardiology
  • Cardio-Oncology
  • Cardiovascular Imaging
  • Cardiovascular Management
  • Cardiac Surgery Team
  • Cardiovascular Team
  • Early Career Professionals
  • Federal Cardiology
  • Fellows in Training
  • Geriatric Cardiology
  • Heart Failure & Transplant
  • Health Care Innovation
  • International Hub
  • Interventional
  • Peripheral Vascular Disease
  • Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease
  • Program Directors & Graduate Medical Educators
  • Senior Cardiovascular Professionals
  • Sports & Exercise Cardiology
  • Women in Cardiology
  • And in 2022, we’re excited to add a new Critical Care Cardiology Section to this list!
  • Member Hub, ACC’s online member community, provides ACC members with a dedicated space to connect with others in their specialty, discuss the latest educational courses and conferences, exchange strategies and best practices for succeeding in a rapidly changing healthcare landscape, build mentoring relationships and more. Member Hub is completely free for all ACC members.
  • With its FIT and Early Career Professionals Newsletters, the ACC provides tomorrow’s leaders in the field with clinical news and professional advice on everything from managing your career and landing a new position, to getting published, building your practice and more.
  • ACC’s FIT/Early Career Webinar Series is focused on helping cardiovascular professionals manage and launch their career and navigate topics that aren’t covered in clinical training like managing and building a practice, laying a solid financial foundation and more.
  • The College is committed to strengthening the pipeline of future talent into the field, which is why it offers free membership and full benefits to Medical Students and Medical Residents.

    The Young Scholars program also works to introduce high school and college students to careers in cardiology.

    Quality
  • The ACC’s Quality Improvement for Institutions program, provides assessment, monitoring and evaluation tools that transform clinical data into practical solutions that can make a difference in patients’ lives.
    • The QII program combines the ACC’s proven quality improvement solutions the NCDR and ACC Accreditation Services.
    • The established NCDR (National Cardiovascular Data Registry) offers clinical data capture and national benchmark reporting on catheter based interventions, ICD implantations, acute coronary syndrome, congenital heart disease and peripheral vascular disease.
    • ACC Accreditation Services grants accreditations/certifications to facilities that demonstrate sustainable quality improvement while focusing on improved outcomes and patient satisfaction.
    • Also included in QII are ACC’s existing quality initiatives that disseminate evidence-based strategies and promote best practice sharing. Self-assessments, toolkits, webinars and online stories are part of these programs.
  • The ACC is host to the International Centers of Excellence program, which recognizes institutions worldwide for their commitment to patient care, continuing education and quality.
  • The ACC has created over a dozen mobile apps for use at point of care on your mobile or tablet device including but not limited to:
    • Guidelines App: Ever expanding compilation of ACC Guidelines at your fingertips
    • Anticoag Evaluator app for use to assess stroke and bleeding risk and the benefits and risks of antithrombotic therapy in patients with chronic atrial fibrillation
    • CardioSmart Explorer app designed to enhance the clinician/patient relationship at point of care. It features cardiac graphics and animations to help physicians effectively review and discuss common heart problems and treatment options with patients
    • The ASCVD Risk Estimator, published jointly between ACC and AHA, helps health care providers and patients estimate 10-year and lifetime risks for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease using the pooled cohort equations and lifetime risk prediction tools. It provides easy access to recommendations specific to calculated risk estimates and includes easily accessible guideline reference information for both providers and patients related to therapy, monitoring and lifestyle.

      Plus, a multilingual, web-based version of the app is now available in six languages: German, Spanish (Spain) and Indonesian, in addition to English, Portuguese and Arabic.
    • The ACC TreatHF app helps clinicians confirm which therapies are suggested for their patients with symptomatic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (stage C HFrEF) and provides guidance on the use of each therapy. The 2021 update to the app features an improved user experience and provides an expanded Therapy Reference section and new content from the 2021 Update to the 2017 ECDP for Optimization of Heart Failure Treatment

DOMESTIC:

Early Career

  • The College recognizes that the first few years out of training are a time of professional and personal upheaval – and financial strain. That’s why we’ve introduced a tiered dues system for members in their first three years out of training:
    • Members in their first year out of training receive 75% off their membership dues
    • Those in their second year receive 50% off their membership dues
    • Those in their third year receive 25% off their dues

Most importantly? They still have full access to all of their ACC member benefits.

Advocacy

  • Among the issues that the College and its members have focused on this year are:
    • The “Increasing Access to Cardiac Rehabilitation Act of 2021,” a bipartisan piece of legislation that would expand patient access to critical cardiovascular and pulmonary rehabilitation services during a crucial time when treatments for medical conditions have been delayed or avoided during the COVID-19 pandemic.
    • Possible reductions to physician practices because of statutory and regulatory cuts that would limit patient access to Medicare services. The ACC has been actively engaged in communicating with Congress to convey how detrimental these cuts will be to patient care.
    • State-specific initiatives, like TCPR legislation in Massachusetts and reforms to prior authorization and step therapy in Pennsylvania.

 INTERNATIONAL:

  • New this year, the ACC is extending complimentary membership to all International Associate members under the age of 40. We want to ensure that, in the midst of the pandemic and beyond, our members have the support and resources they need to transform CV care on a global scale.
  • We also continue to offer complimentary membership to Fellows in Training around the world, to ensure they have access to our information, tools and resources to help them succeed in their training and beyond
  • ACC’s International Conferences in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East continue to grow in scope, providing regional opportunities for members around the world to access the very best in cardiovascular education
  • We have 40 international country chapters, which increases opportunities for collaboration with national societies and provides our members located outside the US with a local branch of the ACC
  • We’ve grown to over 15,000 members strong outside the US and become inclusive of all members of the cardiovascular team (Nurses, Pharmacists and Physician Assistants) to help bring all members of the care team around the table for key discussions

CARDIOVASCULAR TEAM:

  • Already the professional home for advanced practice providers, pharmacists, registered nurses, cardiovascular rehabilitation professionals and technologists, the ACC will also soon expand its CV Team membership category to include perfusionists!
  • The College expanded its eligibility for Fellow of the ACC to focus on advanced education and service to and participation in the ACC, making it easier for accomplished members of the care team to be recognized with the FACC designation. AACC and CV Team members can fill out the online FACC Eligibility Calculator to determine whether their qualifications make them eligible to apply for the designation.
  • The ACC has an established national-level Distinguished Award to annually recognize a CV Team member for contributions to the ACC community
  • We continue to provide individuals in CV Team training programs free membership through the Cardiovascular Team Student membership category to support and equip a future generation of leaders