Family Physicians Against ABFM Maintenance of Certification Coercion

I'm a family physician, and have been "board certified" since I finished residency in 2001. I just recertified again in 2015, with ABFM.  I work full time as a hospitalist, after doing 11 years of clinic crade-grave, with OB, clinic house calls (hospice pts) and nursing home prior to becoming a hospitalist after I got tired of feeding the clinic money and forms machine.  And I'm more and more bothered by the travesty of Maintenance of Certification which seems to be a scheme to feed a reputed $62 million a year to the American Board of Family Medicine, including their chairman who I've read is making $745,000 a year to find new ways to harass us more instead of less.  Anybody know any other family docs who make that kind of money?

And now, MOC is not only boards, it is BLS and ACLS.  As soon as you finish testing on the stupid dummy, you have to take it again in 3 months, or at my hospital, you lose your job, no appeals, no excuses.  I don't know about anyone else, but I have not seen our save-rate go up.  The way it's going, pretty soon you'll have to do a hand-washing class every month just to show you know how.

Personally, I've already gotten board certified by the National Board of Physicians and Surgeons (NBPAS) but that doesn't yet help much, other than getting a few concessions from the ABFM and ABIM MOC rackets.  Malpractice insurers drive too much of the industry, (and perhaps are far too much in bed with the ABFM and other boards anyways) and require some kind of re-testing mechanism to "make sure" that practicing physicians know how to practice well.  And NBPAS does not have a testing mechanism, so probably won't cut it for insurers.


In my opinion, we need to either:

1.  Revamp ABFM as a certifier of REASONABLE (not just profitable) different methods of testing that the individual physician could choose from, kind of like ACLS for instance. Then the market could drive making the test palatable and drive prices down with competition. ABFM could still do tests if they wanted to, but they would be just one source, similar to on-line ACLS courses.

OR

2.  Replace ABFM and/or augment NBPAS to do the above if ABFM and the other racketeering monopoly-test boards don't want to.

And while we are at it, maybe lobby the Congress and the President to repeal and replace the MOC monopolies that the Boards engineered into ObamaCare!

If you are a family physician who wants to organize and do something about it, let's start a dialogue.  And if ABFM wants to retaliate, then I have an answer: class-action lawsuit.   I know we are all busy, but sometime we need to stand up for ourselves against the nonsense and the greed!

Leave comments here, and I'll figure out more on how to contact and organize as we go if anyone else wants to get involved.

- David Jarvis, MD
   Baraboo, WI