More internists are failing the MOC exam-why could that be? Resistance to ABIM's MOC grows.

Why are more internists failing the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) exam? Kevin Pho on his medical blog offers two suggestions. See here. One reason is what I call the economically driven bifurcation of internists into hospitalists and officists and the disuse atrophy of hospital care skills in the office bound docs and the lack of familiarity with the preventive care changes and routine treatment of non acutely ill patients on the part of the hospitalists. If you don't treat respiratory failure,sepsis and acute heart failure on a regular basis you might just not do as well on the boards. The second reason Pho suggested is that the hassle factor in office care is now so high , with insurance,computer,and quality measures documentation  ever increasing that the fire in the belly to try and keep up with everything may be burning too low to try and keep current on conditions  you no longer are called upon to manage.

The suggestion that there should be one test for the hospital based internist and another for the officist has some merit but what about the dwelling number of dinosaurs who still try to do both. Of course that group is rapidly dying out.

And the more I read and hear about the absurd hoops internists are expected to jump through to try and satisfy the ever onerous non-test aspects of the ABPM's MOC process, the happier I am that I retired.See here for a great presentation of the clown-designed MOC program authored by the leadership at the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM).

I am pleased to see that there is at least some organized,as well as much unorganized, effort to resist or maybe even boycott the latest MOC affront imposed by the well paid folks at ABIM. See here and here. Further, mega kudos to Dr. Paul M. Kempen for his efforts to resist the MOC movement. Read what he has to say here. See here for Dr. Wes Fisher's comments re the big business that testing physicians has turned into.

Also of interest are the questions posed by Dr. Marc S. Frager to Dr. Richard J. Baron as well as Dr. Barron's reply.See here.

If you want to sign a petition to urge the ABIM to rescind their latest edicts regarding MOC ,go here. 

It is easy to find much anger and indignation directed towards the ABIM and recent revelations about possible conflicts of interests regarding its leadership has fanned the flames even more.