Earlier this week we published a story about the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) white paper on Maintenance of Certification Continuing Medical Education (MOC/CME). We have received various responses and welcome your comments on the story and the ABMS White Paper which we will publish promptly.
We are encouraging everyone to read the white paper for themselves and submit comments to the ABMS by March 1st to ABMS at ABMS_MOC_Support_Program@abms.org.
The following is a response from an ABMS/ACCME joint working group committee member Nancy Davis. Nancy is one of our nation’s top experts in MOC/CME and performance improvement CME.
After reading your February 14 blog, I’m compelled to respond. Although I served on the ABMS/ACCME MOC CME Working Group, the opinions expressed here are my own. I am not representing the Working Group, the ABMS or the ACCME.
The recommendations for MOC CME do not call for a new accreditation system; they do not call for “significantly more paperwork for physicians and CME providers”; they do not call for the elimination of commercial support of CME; there is no intent to diminish the attendance at association annual meetings; and there are no disadvantages for academic medical centers, hospitals, medical societies and patients.
The goal of MOC is to ensure on-going physician competence. That is a goal of CME as well. This is an opportunity for CME to be a part of a larger process to ensure improved patient care and outcomes. It’s a call for CME to be evidence-based, relevant to practice, focused on actual practice gaps, free of commercial bias, performance-based and to provide evidence of practice improvement. This is a time for CME to demonstrate its value. The current systems need to ensure high quality, effective CME that can ensure the public that the health care they receive is safe and of the highest quality.
If CME providers wish to respond to the initial recommendations for MOC CME I hope they will respond to the actual document and not inaccurate interpretations.
Nancy Davis
Executive Director
National Institute for Quality Improvement and Education