More Family Docs Do Not Recertify

Medscape put out a bogus article about board recertification and tried to pass it off as a quality study.  The authors of the initial study in the Annals of Family Medicine are perplexed as to why not as many doctors are recertifying for their boards.  Here are the numbers:

Among family physicians originally certified through the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) between 1980 and 2000, 5.6% never tried to get recertified, researchers have found.

That rate, among the 51,678 family physicians included in a new study, increased from 4.9% for those initially certified between 1990 and 1995 to 5.7% from 1996 to 2000,

Instead of getting to the real cause these idiots hypothesize:

The researchers report their findings, which have implications for the growing primary care shortage and burnout, online January 8 in the Annals of Family Medicine.

“We hypothesize that certification attrition is a transitional step between burnout and leaving the primary care workforce although future studies should elucidate the relationship,” the authors write.

They add that understanding why some physicians leave the certification process is also important because “board certification has been associated with benefits, such as improved clinical knowledge, higher quality care, and less disciplinary action.”

These “hypothesis” really smelled biased to me because almost EVERY family doctor thinks the MOC is a scam.  And so I went and found out why it smelled like crap and here it was in the footnote of the study:

  • Conflicts of interest: Drs. Peterson and Puffer are employed by the American Board of Family Medicine.

  • Funding support: The Robert Graham Center received support for this study from the American Board of Family Physicians in the form of a contract for ongoing collaborative research.

This study was DONE BY THE ABFM!  And the AAFP is promoting this article!!  Why?  See below:

The authors write that ABFM is trying several things to lower the attrition rate. One is promotion of the PRIME Registry, a tool to improve population health and clinician performance by turning electronic health record data into reportable measures. It has the potential to simplify reporting for certification and payment of fees.

 ABFM is also partnering with the American Academy of Family Physicians to assess for burnout and provide resources for those at risk.

More proof that the AAFP is benefitting from the ABFM MOC process.  Partners in crime until the end.  We all need to stop supporting them!

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