President's Message:
ABAI Diplomates — Our Voice in Making MOC Increasingly Relevant
by Stephen I. Wasserman, MD
I would like to use this opportunity to share with all of our diplomates some exciting and I hope welcome news regarding Maintenance of Certification (MOC) from the meeting of the ABAI Board of Directors in Baltimore in April. The directors are working diligently to make MOC more relevant, easier to accomplish and less expensive for our diplomates. I have news to share with you on all three fronts.
First, and probably of highest interest to you is the fact that we have been able, not only to keep costs of MOC stable, but the directors have decided that we can begin our goal of decreasing costs for MOC. In this regard they approved a reduction in exam fees for both Certification and MOC secure examinations of $50.00. While we all recognize this is but a modest decrease, it is a move in the right direction. More importantly the directors have committed to an annual review of exam fees with the goal of further decreasing them as finances warrant. Those of you who have already paid the old fee were sent rebates in early May. If you've paid via credit card,
your refund should have appeared on your billing statement. If you wrote a check, the refund was made via check. In the event that you did not receive a rebate, please contact the ABAI office.
Second, in an attempt to not only decrease costs to our diplomates, but also to respond to helpful comments from many of you, the ABAI has entered into discussions with a vendor to provide a new, and much simpler, Patient Experience of Care (PEC) survey. We anticipate finalizing a contract with this vendor soon with the goal of providing a PEC survey that is pertinent to both adult and pediatric patients; the survey would need only to be done once, and would be streamlined to less than a dozen questions instead of over 40. These latter modifications will make it easier for patients and those responsible for their supervision to more easily complete the survey, and only doing it once should dramatically lessen the burden to physicians. Importantly we believe that this new process will be substantially less expensive than the current PEC survey and our goal is to keep the cost under $100, and hopefully as little as $75 instead of the current cost of nearly $200.
Finally, in recognition that at present we have only a limited menu of MOC Part IV physician performance in practice modules we are aggressively working with colleagues in our professional societies, at the American Medical Association (AMA)-sponsored Physician Consortium for Practice Improvement (PCPI) and with American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) to try to develop additional modules appropriate for diplomates in our discipline. In this regard measures are currently under development at the PCPI in the areas of sinusitis and atopic dermatitis. A joint working group sponsored by the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) and the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (ACAAI) has completed development of a set of measures for Immunotherapy,
and work is just beginning a measurement development for urticaria. With these measures in hand it will be possible to develop Part IV exercises in a much broader portfolio of conditions relevant to our practices. In addition the AAAAI is currently in development of a module pertinent to the practice of food allergy. Thus over the next several years we anticipate a broader range of opportunities for our diplomates to evaluate their practices and to work together for our patients’ benefit as we learn from each other as to just what works best in clinical care.
The directors and staff of the ABAI continue to listen to you, our diplomates, and in response to your feedback will continue to work to make our MOC program increasingly relevant to you, helpful to our patients, and at as low a cost as possible.
