Maintenance of Certification: Who ’s Regulating the Regulators?

By RICH DUSZAK, MD When four physician certification boards founded the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) in 1933, those forward thinking organizations—and their professional society sponsors—launched a national movement toward ever increasing physician accountability. Back then, quackery was rampant, so “board certification” meant a lot to patients. The ABMS has since grown to 24 member boards, all ostensibly dedicated to serving “the public and the medical profession by improving the quality of health care through setting professional standards for lifetime certification.” Because information and technology now advance so rapidly, those one-time lifetime certificates from years ago may no longer be enough. A doctor who passed a test in 1990 isn’t necessarily competent today. The boards have thus changed their approach to certification; for newly minted physicians, time-limited (e.g., 10 year) endorsements now replace the lifetime ones granted to their predecessors. Initially contingent on additional examinations each certification cycle, these newer time-limited endorsements now additionally require ongoing participation in Maintenance of Certification (MOC®) programs. MOC® has since blossomed into a massively bureaucratic and lucrative industry. Hundreds of commentaries by physicians lament this costly, ever expanding, and burdensome leviathan. Top selling magazines and books have also jumped on the criticism bandwagon. Salacious stories of alle...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs