Primary care recertification eased after physician complaints

Internal and family medicine boards say they have been working with physicians to improve maintenance of certification.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Dec. 12, 2005.

Primary care physicians spoke up, and the certifying boards listened.

Some family physicians and internists made it clear that they weren't happy with the rollout of maintenance-of-certification programs intended to ensure professional competence.

While most agreed with the concept of doctors keeping up to date with medicine, they complained that the process was unwieldy, time-consuming and sometimes impractical.

After they expressed concerns to medical specialty groups, those groups got together with certifying boards. Now physicians and board leaders say the feedback and give-and-take discussions with medical associations and diplomates have led to changes that are making the maintenance-of-certification process more user-friendly to internists and family physicians.

"Diplomates see this as much improved," said Richard Feldman, MD, an Indianapolis family physician and a past president of the Indiana Academy of Family Physicians. He has been an outspoken critic of the new process. "People are getting through it much more easily now."

James Puffer, MD, president and CEO of the American Board of Family Medicine, said that, based on physician feedback, the board had made more than 25 major changes to the self-assessment module. "It's made a dramatic difference," he said.

The American Board of Internal Medicine has used input from internists to help refine its process, too.

"We have had a commitment to make this process meaningful and doable," said ABIM President Christine K. Cassel, MD.