Ongoing continuing medical education is an essential component of life-long learning and can have a positive influence on patient outcomes. However, some evidence suggests that continuing medical education has not fulfilled its potential as a performance improvement (PI) tool, in part due to a paradigm of CME that has focused on the quantity of continuing medical education credits attained rather than the quality of outcomes. The Joslin Diabetes Center has undertaken a new performance-based CME program model that offers performance improvement and continuing medical education as a unified entity that is convenient and accessible for the overburdened primary care physician. This paper describes the origins of the Joslin Professional Educational Continuum as well as its infrastructure and intended outcomes. (Contains 3 figures and 2 exhibits.)