Why the U.S. Specialty Boards Were Sued and Why Those Lawsuits Are Important

I hope every working U.S. physician takes 9 minutes to view this video on why the lawsuits against  the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) member boards were filed and why those lawsuits are so important to our profession.

Please view and share with your colleagues.

An update on the status of those lawsuits will appear on this blog's pages soon.



-Wes

Subject of Major Lawsuit, ABIM Struggles to Fill Positions

Seventy-three positions are needed for the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) to fulfill "a new governance structure," the ABIM announced on its blog July 2, 2019. True to form for this private organization: the need for a "new governance structure" and how that structure will impact working physicians is not disclosed. Will the ABIM have difficulty filling their positions?

It is lost on few in the medical community that the ABIM is struggling to survive. With its Maintenance of Certification program seen as little more than a revenue-generating scheme of little value to working internists coupled with a formidable class action anti-trust and racketeering lawsuit levied against the organization by four internists, the viability of this once-powerful physician certifying organization is being questioned.

And for good reason.

Trust in the integrity of the ABIM and other member boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties that "grandfathers" older physicians' initial certification while forcing younger, more vulnerable working internists to fund the organization by paying larger and larger fees to "maintain" theirs, no longer exists.

The real question now is this: will the other members of the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) that depend on the lucrative certification data gravy train keep the organization afloat?  Will politically powerful specialty society "collaborations" that have developed with the ABIM suffer the same fate?

-Wes

PS: Physicians can keep the pressure on the ABIM but continuing to contribute the the GoFundMe page created in support of the many physicians harmed by Maintenance of Certification.

MOC's Incredible Price Growth

The chart above by Mark J. Perry, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan's Flint campus, was recently published demonstrating the rise in healthcare prices in government services affected by bureaucratic regulatory capture (red) and those that were not so affected (blue).

Physicians are directly feeling the brunt of this economic effect with American Board of Internal Medicine's (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC).

The American College of Cardiology and the Heart Rhythm Society have thrown their support behind the ABIM's MOC product by offering a new, even MORE expensive product, the Collaborative Maintenance Pathway (CMP), that will raise the cost for MOC over 462% from 2000-2020:

Think about that.

I would encourage all of my colleagues to support our GoFundMe effort the end the regulatory capture of the ABIM by contributing whatever you can to the anti-trust and racketeering lawsuit against them.

Thanks.

-Wes