The American Board of Internal Medicine's board of directors unanimously voted to extend a February 2015 decision to suspend Practice Assessment, Patient Voice and Patient Safety requirements for Maintenance of Certification an extra year, through the end of 2018.
This means no internist will have their certification status changed for incomplete Practice Assessment, Patient Voice or Patient Safety activities through Dec. 31, 2018. To maintain certification status, internists are still required to take and pass an exam every 10 years, earn 100 MOC points every five years and complete an MOC activity every two years.
"We have heard from many stakeholders that it is good for patients when physicians regularly evaluate and improve the quality of their care, but we have learned there are a myriad of ways physicians do this today, and that our MOC program should credit clinically meaningful activities," Richard Baron, MD, president and CEO of ABIM, said in a statement. "ABIM will continue to provide MOC credit for quality improvement activities physicians choose to do and expand the list of activities we recognize for MOC credit while we partner with others to increase clinically relevant opportunities for doctors to engage in this important work. But we are not prepared, at this point, to reinstate the Practice Assessment, Patient Voice and Patient Safety requirements."
ABIM said in a statement it continues to discuss approaches to replacing the 10-year examination with "more frequent, lower stakes assessments," but in the meantime, it will keep its 10-year exam because it is currently the best assessment tool available.
More articles on integration and physician issues:
Almost 50% of American Muslim physicians feel scrutiny from patients, study finds
Physicians can stop worrying about robots taking their jobs, says BOE's chief economist
Health First finds 'speed dating' for physicians, patients a success