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:
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Conflicts of interest: Drs. Peterson and Puffer are employed by the American Board of Family Medicine.
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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!
Of course the pigs at the trough are fat. I never in over 50 yrs of nursing and medicine ever had a pt ask what type of murse, or if I was board certified as a doctor. Its funny that nobody cares that I have always had over 250 hrs per year of cme, never been sued for malpractice, and yet I’m graded on some expensive esoteric BS test.
Just retired after forty years and six recertification. Refused to go through the Moc/ SAM nonsense after 2014 even though I wanted to finish as “ Board Certified” Both sad and angry that our Family Medicine leadership let us down. Once the ABFM and AAFM along with the other specialty boards saw the financial windfall in recertification , the game was over. Beyond the costs was the sense that the process did not make for better care but in fact has pushed many qualified doctors to retire too early. After initially starting the MOC process, I am convinced that I could have designed a simple test to weed out incompetent doctors for a tiny fraction of what this MOC process costs to design and implement. If we are taught to follow evidenced based medicine , did anyone in a leadership position think to design a study to see if any recertification process really worked? I guess they got blinded by the dollars.
Wouldn’t it be a real easy study to actually ask the people who chose not to recertify why they didn’t. We all know the real answer-Cost.
I am ABIM certified and passed the exam when boards were still forever. I remember my anger when the ABIM said that those off use with lifetime certification would be listed as “not in the recertification process” in an attempt to get us to pony up the cash. Only a libel class action lawsuit got them to back down.
I passed the Boards 6 times in my 40 year career since 1978. I am tired of this ritual that becomes more expensive every 7 years. Then when this “FP” makes $800,000 per year plus extras for doing nothing other than being a “spokes model” for ABFM IT IS CLEAR TO ME THAT THIS A SHAKE DOWN FOR MONEY. Now we also need to do “SAMS” or “MOC’S” to even out the cash flow at ABFM headquarters. They use the word “burnout” to imply sick depressed doctors but the real word is ANGER! PURE DEEP SEATED ANGER!.
I think Puffer retired and there’s a new guy in living off our dime now. I took the recert and
passed from the November 9th test. Found out before Christmas. I will never take another
MOC test again as once I hit Medicare age I’ll be gone. For primary care docs there will never
be early retirement like state of Illinois employees. Work 30 years and walk away with medical
and 2/3’rds the salary. Nope, FP docs will have to work until they qualify for govermint program.
(Unless of course they stay single and out of paternity suits. They might be able to save enough for
early retirement
Puffer is still President and CEO, comparable to Henley at the AAFP. It’s these permanent executive staffers who are the truly evil ones – the Board of Directors tend just to be useful idiots.
Ok, thanks for educating me. I got confused when dealing with these two groups of
fools.
Puffer is the fattest pig at the trough.
And I hope he reads this.
Well, well, our old traitor Dr. Puffer, the overseer of family doc’s who makes over $800 K per year off of their extorted fees. Anything touched by the ABFM, AAFP, or family practice academia is by definition corrupt. These parties are scum.