“The ACC is pleased to join ASCO and ACP on exploring these additional pathways for cardiologists, oncologists and internists to maintain their certification. For cardiology, the ACC would provide clinicians with learning material and assessments modeled after its lifelong learning self-assessment program (ACCSAP). Helping our collective members in the provision of professional and compassionate care, while also keeping up with current knowledge, is a shared goal. We appreciate ABIM’s willingness to continue to listen to and engage with stakeholders in order to achieve this goal in a more effective manner.”What is not mentioned is the exchange of funds that will occur between organizations. How much will ABIM's inter-organization "certification" cost? Might this be one more financial bail-out strategy for the ABIM, given their long history of financial impropriety and rapidly depleting consolidated net assets? Why does the ACC insist on perpetuating MOC when the AMA House of Delegates voted to end the program? Might these organizations' own financial and political aspirations supercede the needs of their members? How much more money will practicing cardiologists have to spend to remain employed at their hospital systems now that MOC is increasingly tied to our credentials and insurance payments?
Mary Norine Walsh, MD, FACC
President, American College of Cardiology
MOC has become one of the largest single causes of burnout and distrust in our professional societies that increasingly ignore their members' concerns in the name of political correctness and personal gain. This professional society collaboration is anything but helpful to resolving the MOC impass and only serves to strengthen our resolve to end it.
-Wes
16 comments:
ABMS/ABIM/MOC not the only ‘non-profit’ making money for both inspecting and providing consultants for hospitals, meanwhile white-washing institutions too:
"Hospitals accredited by the Joint Commission pay it an annual fee of from $1,500 to $37,000, depending on their size, according to the organization.
They also pay the Joint Commission for inspections, which occur at least every three years and cost an average of about $18,000 in 2015.
In addition, Joint Commission Resources, a subsidiary, provides consultants that hospitals can hire to help attain and keep accreditation."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/watchdog-awards-hospitals-seal-of-approval-even-after-problems-emerge-1504889146?mg=prod/accounts-wsj
One of the problems--the outgoing president of the ACC, Dr. John Harold, was instrumental in passing these new MOC requirements. He is part of the governing body of the ABIM. The logical next question that I should have asked Dr. Williams is how can Dr. Harold have a fiduciary responsibility to the ACC while serving on the ABIM governing body passing legislation which is vastly opposed by the ACC physicians?
Sadly, few days go by where I don't consider quitting the ACC because of what I see as gross abuse, such as the above. The ACC is in the process of separating itself from the membership similar to the AMA. The AMA generates revenue from renting CPT codes to the government; therefore, they are just an arm of the government. The ACC is in the process of increasing revenue from the government also by selling our registry data collected after every cath/intervention, etc. I predict that the ACC will become more and more independent of the cardiologists that they, supposedly, represent.
Pitchforks
By their own account, there's not a shred of introspection within these organizations to even barely justify the value of the recertification process. In their minds its a foregone conclusion. Good for them, while in reality, its good for nothing.
STM speaks the truth. I could not say it any better.
When I was a state representative to the ACC, there was the most contentious meeting this cardiologist has ever witnessed about MOC. Every single cardiologist representative in attendance expressed outrage over MOC abuse. The powers that be at the ACC responded to this with a very tepid, watered down white paper. The ACC wholeheartedly supports MOC because of the revenue it generates.
The motto of the ACC should be: "No margin, no mission". With their new building on M Street in Washington, DC and the massive bureaucracy they are building, the ACC needs a lot of margin.
We are being sold out to the government as our data will be used against us. If you believe that the ACC has your best interest in mind, you are sadly mistaken.
In addition, the ACC has inordinate control from cardiologists associated with Kaiser who do everything within their power to write guidelines biased against any invasive testing or treatment. If you don't believe me, do your own research about the original ACC/ABIM choosing wisely list which gave the absolutely WRONG recommendation about revascularization during MI. How many people died because of the flawed guideline from the ACC? The ACC has blood on it's hands.
I dropped my ACC membership almost a decade ago because of these types of changes, when they moved from a readily accessible facility with physician friendly staff to the inaccessible M Street location with parking only for ACC staff; and am well aware of the prior AMA separation from membership, with them profiting by branding our good work. These organizations have become the property of their non-physician executives, who "rent" figurehead physicians by the year, and control the boards of directors for their own benefit. I'm still holding in there with HRS, but it is growing away from the member friendly NASPE - particularly the progressive commercialization of the annual meeting.
Kim Williams and Rich Chazal are both cowards and too corrupt to acknowledge the ACC's lack of ethics. Even the ACC leaders all agree the issue is the lost revenue from MOC products and their chokehold on making cardiologists pay a tax to them. Any FACC with common sense should quit the ACC and join HRS, ASE, SCAI or the NBPAS. The saddest part of the ACC's string of mistakes is Rich Chazal is a private practitioner who couldn't even run his own practice. It went bankrupt and split up into pieces. His Fort Myers Florida practice imploded in part due to his lack of leadership skills and he has been a hospital employee for a number of years. The ACC is a large organization and there are dozens of places for people to hide and pretend to play the political game. The ACC is almost as corrupt as the ABIM. Massive amounts of money are being wasted on pet projects and clinically irrelevant tasks just to generate obscene amounts of revenue.
ACC MOC Information Hub
https://www.acc.org/education-and-meetings/maintenance-of-certification-information-hub
"The ACC has created an MOC Hub with details about ABIM's current MOC program to inform and help ACC members navigate the changes. Learn more here. Link says 'sorry site under maintenance'."
Is the ACC really listening or just making calculated profitable moves? It appears they have been giving out headfakes and making cajoling announcements instep with ABMS MOC plans and their money managers?
https://blog.acc.org/post/urgent-message-from-acc-leadership-regarding-moc/?_ga=2.240882051.1895006713.1505417845-781060386.1505417845
According to FEC data the ACC PAC appears to have paid more money to republican (healthcare related) candidates in recent elections. (Unbelievable 2013 article and incredulous? responses from ACC's blog.)
https://blog.acc.org/post/i-am-a-republican-can-we-talk-about-a-single-payer-system-2/
Does the ACC need to address its loss of integrity to the public and its members?
Should the ACP, ACC, ASCO, AMA, ABMS/ABIM and all the rest of the special interest shills they work in tandem with be re-branded as influential chapters of the all powerful "Association of Corporate Cronyism" (ACC).
And perhaps the American College of Cardiology should be renamed the "Association of Corporate Coziness" as they bank away tons of money to pay those obscene executive compensations and lobby for the demise of healthcare and physician/patient rights.
How many sources of funding do they have? Look into their finances and be prepared to be shocked.
The "ACC" leadership is cutting the heart out of medicine with back-stabbing betrayal of its 52,000 members. Executives and officers are creating a sad story of increasing deceit and corruption. It is so disappointing to see the ABIM/ABMS-style breaches of trust coming from so many directions.
ACC Partners With Leading Corporations, Organizations On CardioSmart Initiative
https://www.cardiosmart.org/About/For-the-Press/ACC-Partners-with-Leading-Corporations-Organizations-on-CardioSmart-Initiative
"Corporate sponsors of the ACC’s CardioSmart programs include AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Boston Scientific, Bristol-Myers Squibb/sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership, Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive Company, Daiichi Sankyo, Inc. and Lilly USA, General Mills, GlaxoSmithKline, Medtronic, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, sanofi-aventis, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America, Forest Laboratories, Inc., and the California Health Care Foundation. The College is also collaborating with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute on evidence-based content that will be a part of the CardioSmart initiative, and the Peoplechart Corporation in the development of disease management tools."
Nothing to disclose?
A blast of words from the past. Stabs in the back from an ACC insider?
"Understanding the Customer and the New MOC Changes" (ACC Blog, 2013)
https://blog.acc.org/post/understanding-the-customer-and-the-new-moc-changes/#more-99832451
David Crockett May, MD
https://www.thpg.org/cardiovascular-specialists/pages/about-us/doctors/david-may-md-phd.aspx
"Nothing to Disclose" Page 17
http://eo2.commpartners.com/users/acccardio/downloads/120514_SlidesFINAL2.pdf
How much did the CEO of the ACC make in 2015? You don't want to know.
Wes, funny you should mention political correctness also being a problem. The writing on the wall is replace American doctors, in addition to the open boasting of the United Nations that they are doing "Replacement Migration" of the West. The AMA is happy enough to keep in line with the WMA, whose current leader was put in place even while he was already being prosecuted for his corruption (corruption apparently being a "must have" on any medical leader's CV)
Too many Americans are raised to be "color blind" and do this fantasy kumbaya everyone is created equal song (original context: All the White men colonizing USA are equal to the White men of Britain that used to be their neighbors). India actually has a very rigid caste system, and by admitting Indian immigrants to the United States, we also allowed entry of this caste system to some extent. As much as Americans value "equality," Indians absolutely do not. It is a caste system based on skin color, the darker you are the lower down. That sounds very unfair but as time goes on I've noticed staggering differences in how each shade of yellow to darker brown behaves. From super conscientious would absolutely DoNoHarm to any patient, to no problem covering up harm to the patient to overtly harming patients--not all of that is written in stone of course but there are subgroup trends.
The Indians who are darker resent the caste system that they came from and very often still hold to their racial supremacist upbringing (whether they openly admit it or not) and many seek "social justice" which in this case throws Whites and lighter skinned people on the very bottom, inflicting as much damage as is possible. A passive-aggressive people, they will be incredibly nice to our faces but many also align themselves with the same ideology of BlackLivesMatter (which fits the profile of a terrorist group though they are not yet designated that & too many people are afraid of being called racist for that to happen yet)
I was raised "color blind" and it helped ruin my life. No matter how politically correct and accommodating I was, I was always being called "racist" because that's what gets results from White people (until we started realizing NOTHING we can possibly do will result in not being called "racist" so try harder to be racist because there are these non-White racial supremacists that will never let up until we're all dead)
The Raise Act that is being hailed as a wonderful immigration reform actually makes provision to bring in 50,000 replacements of Americans per year. They need credentials and jobs. Whose being forced into retirement? Doctors, doctors, doctors. It's completely intentional to target you and remove you from gainful employment. Obamacare is designed to do this, and is a Cloward-Piven strategy to bring financial ruin. Yes, Wes, you will be conflicted as to whether to approve this comment to the blog: it's not politically correct and on the other hand how are you going to pay your mortgage this is ridiculous and they're raising Chicago taxes AGAIN and the schools have the squeeze put on them even though Obama made sure millions were sent to educate PAKISTAN (also another source of "doctors" as Ontario can testify)
This is a message of warning and call to action. If you think an American Medical School can remain viable when cheap labor is brought in to replace those students who will carry their debt until middle-age (unless there was enough minority privilege to get a free ride) then you are mistaken. Yeah, maybe don't broadcast doom to your students. But lean hard on your "public servants" that aren't trying to destroy America, if you have any. If you're still voting Democrat then I hope you'll slap yourself but the GOPe is no different to be honest. Rand Paul is still fighting for this country. Pray for him daily as I do.
MOC: Are physicians paying the societies and boards to subsidize their own demise and the rise of highly profitable tax exempt entities and grossly corrupt corporations?
CLEARLY
You nailed it. Tragically TRUE. Sadly, the self destruction is not optional. That day one leaves practice is the day when he/she can afford to stop paying up the ABMS and now the colluding societies.
There has been movement on the Jamie Salas Rushford case. How much has the ABIM spent on their harrassing lawsuit to date?
Certification tests for decades were created by volunteers. They still are created by ABMS/ABIM volunteers.
So what is the problem?
Professional medical politicians, money managers and corporate cronies have politicized and corrupted the organization. That's what is wrong.
Strip the ABIM of its obscene compensatory packages and get rid of the political clowns who create so much havoc.
Go back to the original ABIM bylaws that had term limits and strict enforcement of it non-pecuniary rules of operation.
Just look at what has happened!
Greed and politics walked right in and took an executive seat then pushed the physician and patient under the bus.
Get real. Where is the outrage over what has happened?
Baron is not needed by patients or physicians. In fact he has been harmful. Mayor Nutter's partisan chiefs of staff and false ethicists would not be there if not for double their city government pay on top of their lucrative city retirement packages. Pricewaterhouse Cooper chief medical officers and all the other financiers, money strategists, political operatives and pshychometricians are not needed to create a viable certification test.
In fact, volunteers could and should write tests as before, but cut the middleman cheater out. Give the tests at the end of residency and fellowship. The organization known as the ABMS specialty boards and its dark umbrella is so corrupt with its MOC scam and neglect of real science that it needs to be closed down.
Let the volunteers organize voluntary certification tests as they have done for decades prior to the vile corruption of the ABMS.
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