Vincent Rajkumar: 10 suggested action items for physician colleagues

Vincent Rajkumar, Editor-in-Chief of Blood Cancer Journal, shared on X/Twitter:

”10 suggested action items for physician colleagues suffering under the burden of American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) MOC.

1. If your institution allows it, stop participating in MOC. Personally, MOC has no value to me.

2. If your institution requires ABIM certification, advocate for National Board of Physicians and Surgeons as alternative option.

3. Do not participate in more than one ABIM MOC specialty, the one that’s required by your institution. Save your money. Don’t spend a penny more than you have to.

4. Urge professional societies in your discipline to End MOC. We should assess societies by their actions not their words. We are dues paying members. Society leadership should listen to their members. Consider quitting societies that are not sincere in efforts to end MOC.

5. Let colleagues who work with ABIM know that you how you feel about ABIM and how you feel about them supporting ABIM. Nothing like an open and polite personal conversation. They may change their mind.

6. Support and join National Board of Physicians and Surgeons. We need a viable alternative. The more participation they have, the more they can become an accepted alternative at your institution.

7. Support efforts to END MOC such as the petition started by Aaron Goodman. Read further.

8. Talk to influential organizations and leaders who can make a difference and enlist their help.

9. Spread the word on how you feel about the burdens of MOC, the repeated changing of goalposts, impact on your practice, and burnout that you feel. We need everyone’s support.

10. I am at the point where I feel we need an alternative even for initial certification. We do residency and fellowship, lifelong CME, and maintain licensure. Why did we cede so much power and money to a private organization?

A simple search of Twitter shows innumerable physicians in the US posting about their bad experience with MOC and near unanimous opposition to MOC.

When I presented in February at an Annual meeting attended by Chairs of Departments of Medicine from across the US, the feeling in the room was the same as me. The first Chair who spoke after I presented said everyone in his Department hated MOC. He was blunt.

Doctors by nature want to learn and want to do the best for their patient. After every lecture at a CME meeting you will see doctors go up to the speaker and ask for opinions about a complex patient. They do it because they care. They want to do the best for their patient.

In this age and time, forcing doctors to pay $ and answer multiple choice questions to prove their knowledge is silly.

Glad the government is listening. They have the power to intervene. I seek an end to ABIM MOC and/or intervention to ensure that institutions and insurers allow alternatives to ABIM certification such as NBPAS. Read further.”

Source: Vincent Rajkumar/X

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