NAMSS has provided feedback to the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) regarding the American Board of Pediatrics' recent implementation of the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program.
While NAMSS supports the ongoing skill development required of physicians through the MOC, there has been little guidance on how this will change the credentialing process. For example, the American Board of Pediatrics has implemented a permanent certification, eliminating end dates, which are currently verified.
ABMS requested NAMSS' thoughts on the American Board of Pediatrics' changes to their certification policy. A letter was sent to the ABMS Executive Committee last week for consideration. NAMSS will keep the membership updated on this issue.
To read NAMSS' letter to ABMS, click here:
http://www.namss.org/Portals/0/ABMS_Letter_1_20_10.pdf.
2 comments:
Upon reading your blog post, I felt it important to provide clarification on Maintenance of Certification (MOC) with the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP), the impact it may have on credentialing professionals and suggest an interim process to complete primary source verification for ABP diplomates.
First, our executive team is working closely with the leadership of ABMS to identify new processes and procedures intended to simplify the implementation of MOC as numerous other Boards consider similar changes to certification reporting.
An important correction to the posting above - the ABP has not implemented a permanent certification. A permanent, or what is often referred to by credentialers as "lifetime" certification, was last issued by the ABP in May, 1988. Currently, ABP certifications fall into one of two categories: those which are contingent upon meeting the requirements of MOC and those which are NOT contingent upon meeting these same requirements. All pediatricians certified in 2010 and those who enrolled in MOC in 2009 are the first population to receive certification from the ABP which is contingent upon meeting MOC requirements and no longer has a specific date. Quite the opposite of permanent certification, diplomates with this distinction may, in fact, lose certification by not meeting specific requirements at the end of any calendar year throughout their 5-year cycle.
As ABP diplomate certification status only changes at the beginning of a calendar year, unless revoked for disciplinary reasons, conducting ANNUAL primary source verification in January will ensure you have accurate certification status for ABP diplomates. Recognizing that credentialers enlist programs and procedures which require a specific end date, you may want to enter the end of the current calendar year into this field, with proper notation that this is a reverification date and not a certificate end date.
Primary source verification is available at www.abp.org at no cost. All diplomates who are currently certified by the ABP are listed on this Web site. In addition, the ABP verification of certification site identifies those diplomates currently meeting the requirements of MOC.
Thank you for your clarification, Mary. ABP staff has contacted NAMSS to let us know that you are working to provide MSPs with further guidelines on how to incorporate the MOC into the credentialing process.
We'll be passing along any information we get from ABP and ABMS to the membership through the NAMSS Blog and NAMSS homepage.
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