I just got back from our annual EP meeting (HRS) which was in Boston. As you can imagine, the entire CME process has been bastardized to monetize the ABIM (American Board of Internal Medicine). After dutifully checking off which sessions I attended and rating the speakers, I noted a few things.Yes. It. Is.
Firstly, all attendees were electronically tracked with RFID tags. Our attendance at the sessions were electronically tracked and automatically noted. A pretty neat feature and designed, I think, to prevent fraudulent CME behavior.
We had to answer a separate ABIM Maintenance of Certification (MOC) section and actually provide prose with a minimum and maximum word count. There was a warning stating that the content of our replies would be reviewed before the ABIM would bless them for the MOC process.
Which begs the question. Under what circumstances does the ABIM have the authority to legitimize or delegitimize my reply to their nonsensical questions? The MOC portion of the CME conversion was more of a sampling of my opinion. Is this the new MOC paradigm: impose an educational tax on our meetings and then also charge a toll on their MOC highway?
This process is not only corrupt and inefficient; it is now surreal and insane.
MOC® is little more than taxation of physicians without representation.
(And we still don't have ABIM's financials from 2017 for the public's review.)
-Wes
Slapping an electronic tracking collar on physicians?
ReplyDeleteThis digital tagging reveals the disgustingly greedy mental status/moral depravity of those who design and implement such systems and requirements.
The ABIM, HRS and all the other senseless supporting organizations have busied themselves in the wholesale demoralization of the profession with their unending unethical abuses for the sake of MOC money and commercial data collection.
This is revolting! MOC must end and the related gravy train industry must be stopped.
The ABIM MOC conversion process of CME for the HRS meeting consisted of a set of questions asking vague points such as what meaningful changes we would make in our practice or what quality metrics would be embraced etc. These queries reflect a surreal and corrupt bureaucratic organization that is out of control.
ReplyDeleteIs the ABIM claiming to be a final arbiter of post graduate clinical behavior? Doesn't the last 15 years of corruption and a misaligned ethical compass on Walnut Street indicate the ABIM needs to answer questions and not the Diplomates? How can the ABMS and ABIM impose a transfer tax on our CME activity? How can the ABMS and the ABIM build a revenue generating toll plaza on our career paths?
And let's look at the cost structure and spending habits at the ABIM? Why can't they reduce their massive overhead? Why can't they demonstrate the same sense of austerity they ask of us by slashing their waste? Why can't they look into moving out of Walnut Street and saving money? Why is the ABIM blind to their discordant, hypocritical message? Why is an IRS declared non-profit organization allowed to abuse the American Taxpayer with impunity?
Where is the IRS? Where is the PA State AG? Where is the FTC? Where is the FBI/DOJ?
Where is the ABIM Form 990?
That electronic collar will explode Wes. You need to be careful. Is this true? I think you are joking
ReplyDeleteMedicine's Deep State...
ReplyDeleteArthur Brooks from the AEI was recently interviewed and that interview is the catalyst for this new way of thought.
ReplyDeleteCompetition against the ABMS and the ABIM is and always be a moral good.
It is a moral and ethical imperative to compete and take down the ABMS/ABIM structure.
More so since the premise for the ABMS and the ABIM is not to win the competition but to eliminate the competition by any means necessary. It is a form of intellectual sabotage or in the case of the ABIM, terrorism. Intellectual terrorism in the form of ruining the lives of countless physicians via Civil Lawsuits and the use of an ex-felon as its enforcement officer. The ABIM is in the business of constructing so called "power structures" as a rent seeking mechanism. The world of Medicine in our country needs intellectual freedom and liberty. Not the monopolistic, wasteful, deceitful mechanism that exists on Walnut Street. The vast majority of ABMS and ABIM members need to strike against this fringe element at the ABIM hellbent on polarizing the vast community of hard working honest clinicians.
Brooks opines that a strong organization has a "soft heart and a hard head". The opposite is true at the ABIM and the ABMS. They have established their identity as parasitic organizations whose mission is to galvanize their political future off the backs of clinicians. They willfully ignore the chorus of protest from its constituents to stop wasting money and to stop inhibiting our professional lives. Instead these arrogant nasty trade organizations super-charge their operations off the American Taxpayer while swinging a billy club at the heads of ordinary physicians.
The ABIM and the ABMS does not share any sense of unity and solidarity with clinicians. They have amply demonstrated they are an avatar for a bureaucratic cohort run amok. These non clinicians are eyebrow deep in a political environment they designed and lit aflame using the accelerants of ignorance, arrogance and insouciance.
We have had enough.
Where the hell are the 2017 ABIM Form 990s?
How much money has gone missing at the ABIM undocumented on their tax filings?
ReplyDeleteWhat business partners and activities have they been shielding, deflecting and even hiding from public attention?
Dr. Baron? How many top contractors/contracts worth tens of millions of dollars have not been reported for government and public scrutiny on the ABIM tax forms?
ABIM's tax forms need to be thoroughly and independently audited. The entire ABMS along with its umbrella investigated for impropriety by the US Internal Revenue Service. The not-for-profit status of each board and the umbrella must be re-examined.
The ABMS umbrella should have put the ABIM on probation according to its own bylaws. Look at how they ignored Dr. Cassel, Dr. Wachter, Dr. Baron and many others' egregious conflicts of interest, financial shenanigans, power brokering, constitutional abuses and pure theft of public and private money while working at the ABIM. It is not just troubling, it is sickening.
We all know why the ABMS never put the ABIM on probation. They are the ABIM! The medical boards can have no independent policy outside the ABMS. In fact, all the executives are puppets of the corrupt ABMS leadership and have clearly become vassals of corporate and corporate infiltrated special interests.
People need to wake up and understand that we have a modern healthcare scam of gargantuan proportions at the quality assurance cartel. Its tentacles are everywhere. The cunning corruption is primarily funded by MOC and the entire quality assurance cartel is run by the ABMS/ACGME and close partner/affiliated NGOs.
It's a Ponzi scheme run like a protection racket.
The current revelations on this blog/news site about coercive data collection/money collection are yet more aspects of the Ponzi scheme and highly monetized and politicized medical boards run amok with personal self-dealing and blatant corruption.
The ABMS is the clear front runner as a winner of the gold-star award for corruption. Any doubts? Just try to find time to look at this cunning cartel and its executives without blinders. Try to see clearly without the fear their white-collar thugs have introduced into the ABMS/ACGME educational Ponzi scheme/protection racket.
It is no wonder the ABIM tax forms are always late!
ReplyDeleteDr Baron and his CFO Mr. Mandes failed to list millions of dollars of Pearson Vue testing center contract work on their tax filings year after year. Why is this? Pearson is by far the top independent contractor of the ABIM. Does this mean that the ABIM/ABMS are in fact not independent, but rather business partners seeking to enhance profits by manipulating the physician workforce? Or is the entire ABMS just a vassal corporation manipulating physicians and bullying them financially and politically.
It appears that the late tax forms and consistent failure to list Pearson as a independent contractor tells us just how complex the business relationships actually are.
The ABIM, ABMS and the other medical boards are stooges - marionettes dancing for European corporate special interests. Pearson, Elsevier and Wolters Kluwer to list a few. It is troubling that there are no practicing clinical physicians running these organizations anymore - private equity firms, the greater part of the medical industrial complex and even the defense contractors are getting in on the scheme of gaming physicians and patients.
The entire ABMS is a corrupt. Look how "Dr." Baron has acted way outside his job description in the past as director and officer in varying capacity of the ABIM board. Baron long before he became CEO, when he claimed to be a humble medical home physician was backstabbing physicians by leading teams of thugs and lawyers to undermine the independence of physicians and to put ACP competitors out of business. The DOJ should investigate how Baron received his current high salaried position by violating the constitution of the United States and helping Christine Cassel in her supreme abuse of official and unofficial power while working for the ABIM and the federal government.
Add highly deficient reporting on their tax forms to Dr. Barons list of accomplishments creating ABIM's own version of Watergate break-in and cover-up.
All the crap the ABIM continues to pull flies in the face of decency and it defies rational ehtical behavior and sound governance.