A scary new medical intervention…

This is a story about a new medical intervention. It’s an important one because it affects all doctors—and therefore all patients. 1. It’s expensive. Of course. 2. There is no credible evidence that it works. But its marketing is aggressive. 3. The overwhelming majority of physicians disapprove of it. 4. Cheaper alternatives exist. 5. The company that makes the treatment is rich and influential. It’s hard to believe something like this could be approved in the United States. But not only is this new intervention approved; it is being forced on physicians—and patients—by eminence-based fiat. The treatment is the new board certification process, called maintenance of certification or MOC. In the past, board certification was a term associated with competence. My doctor is “board certified.” Hospital privileges and in some cases licensure turned on being board certified. Getting board certified meant passing a major test at the end of training. That used to be it. Then the board, which turns out to be a private non-profit organization run by mostly non-practicing doctor-executives, decided that medicine was changing enough to warrant re-examination every ten years. Few people objected. Doctors took time away, went to courses, and re-certified every decade. Things changed. The American Board of Internal Medicine upped the ante. Closed-book testing every decade was not enough. ABIM came up with something called MOC—maintenance of certification, which includes one...
Source: Dr John M - Category: Cardiology Authors: Source Type: blogs