MOC and Recertification - As Predicted

David H. Johnson, MD, former board member of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), authored an opinion piece entitled "Maintenance of Certification and Texas Bill SB1148 - A Threat to Professional Self-Regulation" in the August 7th issue of JAMA. At the end of his article, Dr. Johnson discloses that he served as a member of the American Board of Internal Medicine board of directors from 2007 until 2015 and as board chair from 2013 until 2015.

Dr. Johnson's leadership and influence at the ABIM spanned the time of the purchase of the ABIM Foundation $2.3 million condominium in December 2007, the hiring of the ABIM's felonious "Director of Investigations" (formerly "Director of Test Security") in 2008, the Arora Board Review sting operation in 2009, blind approval of Christine Cassel, MD's conflicts as she simultaneously served on the boards of Kaiser Foundation and Hospitals and Premier, Inc., approval of a $1.2 million golden parachute for Dr. Cassell as she left for the National Quality Forum, and the appointment of Richard Baron, MD who served revolving-door positions from the ABIM, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the National Quality Forum, and back to the ABIM as he worked to create "seamless" care models for their organization and others.

Dr. Johnson tries to defend MOC by referring to an opinion piece published in 1979 by Arnold S. Relman, MD (who as the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine at the time and a staunch single-payer advocate). But Dr. Johnson failed to mention Dr. Relman's prescient predictions for recertification shortly after introduction of the exercise over 40 years ago:

"Now there are signs that the boards and many of the specialty societies are beginning to have second thoughts about the whole idea of recertification. At the meeting last March of the American Board of Medical Specialties, delegates had such misgivings that they could not agree on whether a specialist's recertification status should even be mentioned in the Directory of Medical Specialists. The Council of Medial Specialty Societies reports that at least four of its constituents societies (representing dermatology, neurological surgery, orthopedic surgery, and radiology) now oppose the idea of recertification, and other societies are said to have 'sizable blocs of members with serious reservations.' At the recent meeting of the AMA's House of Delegates in Chicago, a resolution was taken under consideration that recommends that all specialty boards except Family Practice call a moratorium of recertification. The intent of the resolution is to put an emphasis on mandatory continuing medical education (CME) as a preferred alternative to any kind of recertification program. It is still too early to know whether these developments portend a decisive change in organized medicine's attitude toward recertification, but what seems clear is that the recertification process no longer commands widespread confidence, if it ever did. ... Many doctors are worried that many perfectly competent and conscientious practitioners might be unable to pass recertifying examinations that emphasize arcane facts and the latest literature rather than the practical management of patients. Many doctors also suspect that even voluntary programs would inevitably become compulsory and that the whole recertification process would soon come under government scrutiny and ultimately government control. Reimbursement schedules and hospital staff appointments might then be determined by recertification status; in consequence specialists unable to meet arbitrarily imposed examination standards might find their livelihood in jeopardy."

Dr. Relman's prescient predictions are now most practicing physicians' reality. There is a certain schadenfreude that exists with the physician community toward the ABIM since passage of Texas anti-MOC legislation, SB1148. The ABMS Member boards (and the ABIM in particular) are responsible for Texas Bill SB1148, not practicing physicians. The threat to practicing physicians is not the loss of self-regulation, as Dr. Johnson surmises. Rather, it is loss of trust in the US physician credentialing system that has been spawned by the threats, intimidation and indifference to fraud by members of our bureaucratic physician academic elite within the credentialing community because of the huge profits and control over physicians it generates for their own purposes...

... just as Dr. Relman predicted.

-Wes