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THE CONSERVATORY OF MEDICAL ARTS AND SCIENCES
XVII
THE SEARCHLIGHT MESSENGER
THE SEARCHLIGHT MESSENGER
Blog
Maintenance of Certification: Doctors Strike Back
| Posted on May 16, 2015 at 3:36 PM |
 Doctors Strike Back Underlying
much of the controversy surrounding Maintenance of Certification (MOC), is the question of how much, or even
whether, the process as currently structured actually improves physician
performance and/or patient outcomes. On February 3, 2015, many physicians
received a surprising email from Richard Baron, MD, MACP, president and chief
executive officer of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). Referring to the board’s controversial maintenance
of certification (MOC) program, Baron wrote, “ABIM clearly got it wrong. We
launched programs that weren’t ready and we didn’t deliver a MOC program that
physicians found meaningful…We got it wrong and sincerely apologize. We are
sorry. ” Baron’s email— which went to the
approximately 200,000 internists and practitioners of 20 sub-specialties who
have obtained their board certifications from the ABIM—followed by a few weeks
(and many believe was at least partially in response to) the announcement a new
organization, the National Board of Physicians and Surgeons (NBPAS), with the announced goal of giving doctors “an
alternative route for continued board certification.” It is led by Paul
Teirstein, MD, chief of cardiology at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California, and an outspoken MOC critic. While the controversy surrounding MOC
remains far from settled, it seems clear that critics of the process and of
ABIM have scored some significant gains, by forcing ABIM to review or scrap
some elements of MOC, and by possibly opening new paths to maintaining
certification. Evolution of MOC requirements The creation of NBPAS and the ABIM’s
apology are but the latest developments in a long-simmering dispute over how
doctors should best keep their skills and knowledge up-to-date—and prove that
they are doing so. The controversy dates to the 1990s, when the ABIM instituted
a policy whereby, beginning in 2000, physicians who certified after 1990 would
have to recertify every 10 years. (Until then certification had been
life-long.) The change was subsequently adopted by the other 24 boards
comprising the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS). The 10-year maintenance requirement
produced some grumbling among doctors, but no organized resistance. That
changed at the start of 2014 when ABIM announced that doctors would need to
earn accreditation points on a continual basis over the 10 years between taking
the recertifying examination. Moreover, doctors who had board certified before
1990 would be listed as “certified, not meeting MOC requirements” on the ABIM’s
web site. For Teirstein and many of the
physicians boarded by the ABIM, these latest changes were the final straw. They
were further incensed by what they regarded as the excessive growth of the
nonprofit ABIM—whose budget exceeded $59 million—and the nearly $29 million
spent on salaries, benefits and “other expenses” during the ABIM’s 2014 fiscal
year. A few months later Teirstein launched an online petition opposing the MOC
requirements that to-date has garnered more than 23,000 signatures, he says. In addition, he says, “I began getting
comments like, ‘it’s great we have all these signatures, but what do we have to
show for it? Have they [the ABIM] actually changed anything?’ And they had
not.” The NBPAS alternative Teirstein’s response was to found the NBPAS, a nonprofit organization
with what he describes as “a much less expensive, much simpler approach to
life-long learning.” In the news release announcing its formation, the
organization says it is “committed to providing certification that ensures
physician compliance with national standards and promotes lifelong learning.”
Among the requirements for continued certification are that a candidate be
previously certified by an ABMS-member board and have completed 50 hours of CME
in the past two years. Teirstein describes NBPAS as a “grass- roots organization,” one
that is funded entirely by its members. Membership fees are $85 per year or
$169 for two years, and cover all specialties and sub-specialties covered by
the ABMS. “Right now we’ve got about a thousand members and we’re making ends
meet doing that,” he says. Teirstein is taking no salary. As of mid-April none of the nation’s hospitals were accepting
NBPAS certification as a basis for admitting privileges, but Teirstein notes
that the process usually involves approval from numerous boards and committees
and thus will take some time. “I’m of the firm belief that the as long as the
medical community is willing to stand up and say this is what they want we’ll
figure out a way to make it happen, but it won’t be overnight,” he says. Teirstein and other NBPAS board members say they support the
notion of physicians keeping their knowledge and skills up to date, but think
CME offers the best method for accomplishing that. Teirstein notes that CME
courses must be accredited by the American Council for Continuing Medical
Education (ACCME) to count towards license renewal. “We’ve decided the best
compromise is where you can have lifelong learning which doctors don’t consider
onerous,” he says. “The doctors can choose which offerings to attend. They’re
not going to pay and take time to go to something that’s not relevant.” ‘It’s not good learning’ Harry Sarles, MD, FACG, an NBPAS board member and past president
of the American College of
Gastroenterology objects to what he calls the “esoterica” on the
certification examinations. “It’s not good learning. It’s learning for the
test,” he says. “ABIM should not be allowed to set the bar, make the rules, and
then provide all the CME that can only be accepted to meet their rules,” he
adds. “I’m answering to my hospital, my state, my patients, the health plans,
in terms of my quality being measured and monitored. And now ABIM steps in and
says you should be doing something for us too. I felt like I was in the middle
of a shakedown.” “When I took my certification I felt proud and driven to
continuously improve myself,,” he says. “But everything ABIM has instituted
since then, to my way of thinking, has really been about themselves and not
what’s best for physicians.” Sarles endorses the idea of physicians demonstrating quality and
a commitment to ongoing education, but wants to see “multiple pathways” for
doing so. “I’m all for competition, because it will make us all better,” he
says. “If we only had one kind of car to buy it would probably be a crappy car.
Whatever your criteria are, competition is very healthy and I believe in it.” The ABIM response ABIM’s February 3 statement, while not
directly acknowledging NBPAS, did appear to address some of its complaints and
those of others who have been critical of the MOC process. It said that the
board will:
In addition, according to the
statement, “ABIM will work with medical societies and directly with diplomates
to seek input regarding the MOC program” via meetings, webinars, forums, and
other venues. “We are embarked on a whole new way of doing business and much
more engagement with our community,” Baron said in a phone interview with Medical
Economics. As evidence, he cites implementation of
“a sub-specialty board structure that involves depth in each of the disciplines
in internal medicine,” and that includes physicians in community practice as
well as patients and other public stakeholders. “Those groups have been reaching out to
colleagues and members of their societies,” Baron says. “And what we’re hearing
is that lots of the activities we had either as board products or expectations
maybe are being done by other people in the [healthcare] delivery system better
than we’re doing them. And in that case we want to learn more about those and
figure out how to give people credit for the work that they’re doing during
their day jobs and avoid redundancy and wasting members’ time.” Responding to the complaint that MOC
tests doctors on knowledge and skills they don’t encounter in their practice,
Baron says he took the exam a year ago and acknowledges that it included topics
he’d not seen in his general internist/geriatrics practice. On the other hand,
he says, “I think all of us in practice confront that there’s a difference
between what we use every day and what we might need to use some time.” Baron recalls joining the ABIM’s
test-writing committee in the summer of 2001 and being surprised to find the
test included a question on anthrax. But several months later it was a
board-certified internist in Miami, Florida (Larry Bush, MD) who first
identified anthrax as the mysterious substance being sent through the mail that
was sickening—and in the case of Bush’s patient, killing—recipients was anthrax. ”That’s a doctor who had a piece of
knowledge that he didn’t use every day, but fact that he had it made a huge
difference for a patient,” Baron says. (Bush subsequently coauthored an article
about the incident in The New England Journal of Medicine.) Regarding the fees associated with MOC,
Baron says, “Nobody likes to write checks, and when I was in practice there
were a lot of things I wished I didn’t have to pay for. But I want to
acknowledge that it’s really hard for doctors in practice now and every check
is a painful check. We are looking at ways to reduce the cost.” As evidence, he points to the February
3 announcement regarding enrollment fees. “We are taking time to listening to
physician feedback about all aspects of our program before announcing any
additional changes,” he says. “We know that doctors need to
experience more value in the program, and the areas we pulled back on were
those that doctors were in effect saying, ‘I’m not getting much out of this,’”
he says. What do the data show? Underlying much of the controversy surrounding MOC is the
question of how much—or even whether—the process as currently structured
actually improves physician performance and/or patient outcomes. A great many
internists clearly believe it does not, according to a study published in the
January 2015 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine. The authors assembled a focus group consisting of 50
board-certified primary care and subspecialist internal medicine and family
medicine physicians in an academic medical center and community sites. They
found that “at present, MOC is perceived by physicians as an inefficient and
logistically difficult activity for learning or assessment, often irrelevant to
practice, and of little benefit to physicians, patients, or society.” Data on the effectiveness of certification since the institution
of time limitations is sparse, consisting largely of a handful of studies
published over the past 15 years in Academic Medicine, the Journal of the American
College of Cardiology and JAMA, among others. And while MOC
supporters say the studies support MOC’s effectiveness, in a debate earlier
this year with Baron and Lois M. Nora, president and chief executive officer of
the ABMS, Teirstein maintained that the studies’ results are, at best,
ambiguous. He cited, for example, the results of a 2014 investigation
published in JAMA comparing clinical outcomes among patients at four
Veterans Administration hospitals treated by internists with time-limited and
time-unlimited certifications (i.e. those who were grandfathered out of the
ABIM’s 10-year certification requirements and those who were not.) The authors
found “no significant differences” between the two groups on 10 primary care
performance measures. “If you say we have data that supports our MOC process, you’d
better have the data,” Teirstein said in his interview with Medical
Economics. “And if you look at the papers they cite, they’re very
unconvincing.” Baron acknowledges that the evidence in support of MOC “could be
stronger,” but also notes “at least one of the studies he (Teirstein)
criticized met rigorous methodological standards.” “I don’t think it’s unusual to have good faith people arguing
about whether the evidence shows ‘x’ or ‘y,” Baron says. “Every clinician
operates all the time in an environment where the patient didn’t walk out of an
article in a journal. You have to navigate between what you know you know and
how close the patient before you gets to that.” Teirstein says NBPAS has no plans to try and link ongoing
education and training to quality and patient outcomes. “I just don’t think you
can measure this adequately,” he says. “Would randomizing really work? A doctor
might be more inspired to do a good job because he wants to prove you don’t
have to do this [maintain certification.] It’s just not the kind of thing that
lends itself to scientific study.” Looking ahead, Teirstein envisions the NBPAS playing a watchdog
role for the ABMS and its member boards, in addition to providing
certification. “We’ll be keeping an eye on things and making sure everyone
knows physicians are not just going to take whatever they’re given. We’re going
to react and try to make our voices heard.” ABIM requirements
Source: American
Board of Internal Medicine NBPAS requirements
Source: National
Board of Physicians and Surgeons  |
Categories: Clinical Update, Education and Political Action, Medical Law, Medical Opinion
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