This morning the American Board of Medical Specialties’ (ABMS) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program debate reached a larger mainstream media audience when the Wall Street Journalpublished their article by Melissa Beck entitled “Skill Reviews Upset Doctors.”
While it is certainly nice to see an article reaching the main stream media concerning doctors’ concerns with the MOC program, the issue with the MOC debate is not that doctors are upset. The real issue is that doctors have been enslaved by special interests and crony capitalism to complete a MOC process that robs patients of more time with their doctors so that regulators and payers can enrich themselves.
One only has to see how certain aspects of the Wall Street Journal article were highlighted to see how Ms. Beck framed the debate toward business interests. For instance, she quoted Ms. Lois Nora, president of American Board of Medial Specialties who said:
“Many practicing physicians have not had formal courses in patient safety or quality iimprovement”
Ahem. I wonder if Ms. Beck or Ms. Nora have ever heard of the Hippocratic Oath? Doctors spend their entire careers (not to mention many sleepless nights) worrying about their patients’ safety and care. Their livelihoods depend on it!
Yet there is never a moment of serious reflection regarding the sweeping hubris of Ms. Nora’s statement. As spokesperson for the American Board of Medical Specialties, Ms. Nora suggests that without oversight, doctors are lax, uninterested in research or updating their techniques, inattendant to patient safety and unwilling to update their skills. Instead, the ABMS welcomes the tripling of patient volumes, the cameo roles that doctors are increasingly asked to play in patient care, the refocusing of one third to one half of every patient visit staring into an electronic medical record so the ABMS can watch for flinches in quality of care. The overseer who allowed this untenable health care scenario to transpire is effectively positioning themselves to patients that they are their last best hope.
