The American College of Cardiology (ACC) and Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) are negotiating with the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) on how best to preserve the Maintenance of Certification (MOC®) educational product for their mutual interests.
The ACC Board of Governors will be meeting at the ACC scientific sessions in Orlando in early March to decide how best to continue the educational and financial benefits of MOC® for their organizations. Each of these organizations have significant financial and political conflicts of interest with the unproven MOC® “continuous education” program that was foisted on physicians as a quality and patient safety measure above and beyond conventional Continuing Medical Education credits in 1990.
This is not the first time this discussion has occurred. The ACC has had a long history of attempting to provide educational content without having to resort to the strongman testing tactics of the ABMS Board certification cartel propped up by the much richer and politically powerful member organizations of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). With ABIM’s looming fiscal insolvency thanks to years of waste, fraud, and abuse of physicians’ resources, the ACC must now weigh the benefits of maintaining their relationship with the ABMS versus the risk to the organization from ACGME fallout if it abandons their lucrative relationship. One only has to see the many MOC® offerings at this year’s Scientific Sessions to see where the decision is likely to fall.
We should recall that the ACC was the organization that quickly came to ABIM’s rescue when their financial scandal surfaced, issuing this public statement:
In addition, the ACC’s accounting staff have reviewed and discussed the ABIM’s publically available financial statements with an outside accounting firm and have found the statements to be in compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, as utilized by not-for-profit organizations in the United States.
While I am not an accountant, I am a Board certified diplomate of the ABIM that has worked tirelessly to uncover the financial and political shenannigans of the ABIM in an attempt to understand their motivations and conflicts. If the ACC sides with the corruption uncovered in this blog’s pages without addressing head-on the financial benefits to themselves, they risk compromising their reputation as a credible scientific organization capable of transparently managing those conflicts. I would be a shame if they don’t care.
ACC Board of Governors should vote to break ties with the ABIM completely and return to CME, lest they fall prey to the same forces that dissolved the ABIM: avarice, politics, and greed.
Early forecasts predict the odds of that heppening are close to zero.
-Wes
Share this Post
