Don't Be A Slave To Board Tyranny...or Suffer With Equanimity, My Advise To Doctors!

Medical accreditation and recertification boards globally enjoy a monopoly. With monopoly comes tyranny. Power intoxicates and absolute power inebriates absolutely!

Add monopoly to unbridled power and you have a cocktail that feeds impunity...types of which you find in medical boards.

I recently published an article entitled: WHY I LOST CONFIDENCE IN THE MDCN (Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria)

http://m.thenigerianvoice.com/news/168134/1/why-i-lost-confidence-in-the-mdcn.html

...outlining the tendency of this statutory body to bend laws in favour of friends and cronies, ignoring their crimes while coming down hard on the not-so-connected, little did I know that our American colleagues are already sick and tired of the arm twisting and strong arm tactics of their money-guzzling medical boards!

The worst culprit seems to be the American Board of Internal Medicine...ABIM. Its preconditions for recertification are no less financially strangulating than they bear little relevance to practice scenarios...depending largely on didactic recall of theoretic facts so unlikely to be encountered in practice!

Read this excerpted paragraphs from the linked article below:

'All of this backed ABIM into a corner. In February 2015 its new president and CEO Richard Baron sent a letter to the internal medicine community. In it he said “ABIM clearly got it wrong. We launched programs that weren't ready and we didn't deliver an MOC program that physicians found meaningful. We want to change that.” ABIM did not plan to back away from MOC, but it suspended some of the most controversial requirements, agreed to change some of the language it used on its website, pledged to make examinations more reflective of clinical practice, capped fees, and said it aimed to evaluate new methods of physician self-assessment. These were not radical reforms, but they included many of the things that MOC opponents had asked for, along with an apology'.

'In a December 2014 debate with Richard Baron, President and CEO of the ABIM, Cutler asserted that the ABIM and the ABIM Foundation had embraced an organizational “culture of luxury” while at the same time showing insensitivity to the financial and other burdens MOC imposed on physicians. He presented evidence of lavish salaries paid to ABIM executives, a retreat in a fancy hotel, the purchase of a luxury condominium by the ABIM Foundation, and expressed unease about the profitable non-ABIM activities and earnings of former ABIM and ABIM Foundation president and CEO Christine Cassell during her tenure. These charges of poor financial stewardship have been repeated and enlarged upon by others'.

'Faced with increasingly vocal opposition, a federal antitrust lawsuit, investigations into their finances, and a new competing board, they are up against the ropes and flailing wildly.”

Most ominously for ABIM, the ruckus has attracted attention outside the medical community. One nonmedical blogger recently described the ABIM as one of many “obscenely greedy non-profit people/institutions.” The mainstream media is taking notice, too. Newsweek has run a provocative story which includes the author's opinion that “The ABIM is not what it was. Its original mission was to make sure doctors provide patients with the best care. When condominiums and lavish salaries and free trips and making money off of physicians failing tests became a priority, the evidence suggests the organization lost its way'.

'“Physicians are outraged despite ABIM apology for MOC mess.” “Minor changes, proposed to placate the masses? Lifetime certificate holders are exempt? The good old boy network is alive and well'.

'A credible alternative has emerged to the ABIM and other lucrative certifying organizations. All of these developments bode ill for the ABIM and bodies such as the ABMS, ABFM, ABP and ABPN'.

'These events also may portend a permanent change in the balance of power between US physicians and other parts of the medical system such as insurance companies or employers. The authority of the specialty boards has turned out to be more a matter of entrenched assumptions than actual fact. Physicians have learned they have real clout and that organized effort can overturn something many saw as inevitable. This is a potent lesson, and physicians are good at absorbing new knowledge. Look for this to be the first of many doctor-led revolts'.

Solution resides in agitating for the formation of parallel bodied to keep drunken monopolies in check!

You do not have to be a slave to board tyranny...
But with Nigerian doctors set into apnoeic panics at confronting mere medical associations already bloated in greedy gluttony, can we trust them to synergize against the MDCN?

http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2015/03/19/elizabeth-loder-has-the-american-board-of-internal-medicine-lost-its-way/

Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.

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Articles by Tosin Akindele