After exploring the web of corruption that supports the ABIM and NCQI- Name withheld
(editor's note: actually the NCQA, the National Committee for Quality Assurance), I decided I would take a stand against it and not participate in MOC or re-certify with ABIM. I certified with NBPAS and re-certified with them. I truly believe it’s a great organization. I thought perhaps I could influence the situation and force it closer to a breaking point because I practice in a geographically isolated location and if I’m not here treating patients there will be tremendous expense flying/transporting them to the next closest center hundreds of miles away.
I was able to get my hospital system to accept NBPAS as an alternative board certification...for a time. Until BCBS (who answers to the NCQI told the hospital they would no longer pay for my services. I explained to the hospital how board members of ABIM sit on the NCQI board and vice versa. How they profit off physicians through their corruption, how the DOJ has taken a position against ABIM, the class action lawsuits and harm the ABIM is causing physicians and patients alike.
Once there was an economic cost to my opposition the hospital system caved. They said they could no longer employ me if I didn’t re-certify with ABIM. I told them fine, I’ll quit and work as an independent physician seeing only CMS patients (CMS does not require board certification). The hospital told me if I quit they’d revoke my privileges and I’d have to move (it’s the only hospital with an EP lab on the peninsula). So this year, for the first time in 15 years, I didn’t attend HRS. I stayed home and clicked meaningless buttons on my screen to collect the 100 hours of MOC points required to be able to take the ABIM recertification exam. I’ll use my CME time to go to the board review course and learn about what gene mutation is associated with LQT type 6 which I’ll never see in my lifetime rather than HRS which changes my practice for the better every year. This is a cost to patients, it’s not quantifiable, but a cost none the less.
I was happy to sacrifice tremendously for this cause because it’s the right thing to do, but in the end I have a family to support. If we stand alone they will shoot us down, if we stand together we may have a chance. It would be nice if HRS would stand with us. If not them then who and if not now then when.
The time is now. Please contribute: https://www.gofundme.com/practicing-physicians-of-america
8 comments:
If this activity does not illustrate collusion and racketeering, then these terms have no meaning.
Why did he not remain independent and stay out of network with all insurers? Only by contracting with BCBS and being in network are you subject to their credentialing demands. Increasing numbers of docs are. Alternatively move to a state with strong anti-MOC laws. Avoid capitulating for unsound reasons and squandering your leverage as an independent physician.
Calling Things By Their Real Names
Continuing Productivity Development (CPD) - Let the Medical Profession Beware
The "Bluebeards" at the ABMS enforcing corporate mandates are clever about inventing false but enticing words and projecting hypocritical images of themselves. But it is all "professional propaganda".
Reality check: CME and CPD fill their secret rooms with coffers of gold and MOC is the bloody key!
Serial Bonds (Seeds of Modern Corruption)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebeard
I wonder how many people know what the NCQA is? Or about its founding support by fortune 500 companies and payers in 1990. A leading pharmaceutical giant's "independent foundation" helped supply the seed money. The current CEO of the ABIM worked for he NCQA in various capacities and also served on the board at the NQF at the time of "patient safety's first scandal" involving kickbacks from "the industry they receive no funding from". ABIM's CEO Chris Cassel and ABIM's Chair were brought in to clean up the mess. They used plenty of muscle from government contacts and insider positions. Unbridled lobbying money paid out by the NQF to Cassel's policy partner (ABIM VP) helped pay for the tranferred ABIM officer. She moved over to help put out the fires in advance of Cassel who became NQF's CEO only after her "deferred retirement account" matured.
I have never seen such unbridled/unstoppable corporate corruption.
Btw, the ABIM's VP cum NQF lobbyist/communications advisor's husband was a pivotal labor union executive with his hands all over healthcare policy/insurance/benefits.
Ditto on the last one-line tragic statement! Superficial knowledge of these organizations is not enough to understand the depth of corruption and egregiously conflicting ties with corporate/government money-grabbing powerhouses.
Self-enrichment and self-dealing/corporate political agendas
The ABMS is not focused on the maintenance of "quality" (patient safety), but instead concentrates executive efforts on the monopolistic maintenance and growth of corporate cash.
MOC is the brainchild of a greedy mind, not a mind content to focus on their original mission to offer voluntary lifelong medical specialty certifications (with lifelong learning/CME baked into the certification cake as a pledge.)
MOC/CPD are newly invented products to make money and political hay only. (Three decades old or more with no proof/evidence of its efficacy/value, except to profit the ABMS enterprises and their "corporate cronies".
BIG DATA
Data solutions -- collection, storage, verification/reporting services, analysis of health data, and provider referral are all big business.
I wonder if HRS is one of the bullies (or enticing corporations) or just another bullied (or bribed) medical society?
https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2017/11/27/cerner-reportedly-will-partner-with-amazon-on.html
“Where I think we’re also uniquely differentiated is that same information [health advice/instruction to keep you at home] can be presented on the television. So today — you don’t have to be a Comcast subscriber, but if you are — you can say Quil Health on your voice remote, which is a great thing and seniors can do that,” she said. “Now when you go home, your family and loved ones go ‘what do you mean you’re having surgery? What’s this all about? What did the doctor say?’ Well here, let’s go into the family room, let’s watch this on TV, I have a carousel of videos that will explain this to you in three or four minutes. I think we’re just trying to meet people where they are, and extend the value of what is commonly known best practice and nudge them and get that to them at the right behavior points.”
Along with activation through the remote, patients can sync content that they want to view on the television through the smartphone app after verifying their identify by entering a pin, Edwards explained. And to further ensure that patients feel comfortable with the information being displayed on screen, the company has adopted many of the parental control practices that are already well established for normal television.
“You don’t want to be able to click on the TV and all of a sudden you’re seeing mom’s medical records. Not a good experience. So the way that we’re handling that is in the app, typical to a Netflix or any other app that works the same, you can actually tag content, and the content that you want to show can be paired with your playlist on the TV,” she said. “So, whatever you want to show your family, whoever you want to collaborate with [can easily see it]. And when you stop, it blurs. … You have technology that they built in for other things like when young kids in the house watching Game of Thrones. You don’t want kids walking in on the bloody scenes, and so you can blur the TV on pause, and those are some of the things we’re doing to make sure that the viewership is the right audience.”
The platform is, at its core, very much a standard content management system that is designed to be easily implemented and adjusted across organizations, she said. Providers, payers and clinical trial organizers alike will be able to brand the experience with their logos, enact a straightforward or decision logic-based flow of content for each patient, and design whatever custom content they please. On this last point, Edwards highlighted her staff’s ties to NBCUniversal, an old hand when it comes to engaging consumers through television-based entertainment.
“Engagement is in our DNA,” she said. “And it’s not that the data [for patients] is not out there. It’s that it’s not presented in a way that’s compelling for anyone to want to watch.”
As of now, that team is focusing on providing content for musculoskeletal conditions, which Edwards noted is the third greatest healthcare expense for Comcast, has many of the most evidence-based rehabilitation procedures and complements the platform’s strengths with TV-based workouts. But the company is certainly interested in building content teams that can target other areas, she said, and will do so with the full support of its powerful patrons.
“With this shift to value-based payments, this shift to consumerism, it takes big funding, it takes a lot of time, and it also takes a different perspective. [Quil Health is] uniquely positioned in all of that,” Edwards said. “To be able to tackle patients and caregivers, to empower people that may not be able to help themselves but have an ecosystem of surrounding care connected to them — it’s really exciting to me. In the startup world, the typical Series A is 2 million bucks, go see what you can do, then here’s 7 million bucks, go see what you can do. Here, you have two very large corporations investing a lot into this over a promised time period. We’re here to go big or go home."
Seed Money from Independence Blue Cross and Comcast to lower health care costs through controlling/limiting patient/physician relationship/contact further by offering AI/ML/low level provider contacat in the home. Telemedicine/robotic contact with less need for "brick and mortar" offices and visits. Voice recognition products/services are part of the key.
https://www.aiin.healthcare/topics/technology-management/cerner-nuance-partner-mobile-ehr-technologies
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