AMERICAN BOARD OF INTERNAL MEDICINE

For more than 80 years, physicians and patients have entrusted the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) to help the medical profession set high standards and define disciplines. ABIM seeks to enhance the quality of health care by certifying internists and subspecialists who demonstrate the knowledge, skills and attitudes essential for excellent patient care.

The standard of excellence inherent in the medical profession is embodied in the certified physician. Individuals in this distinguished group share a pride in the credential they earn and maintain as part of their life-long commitment to learning. ABIM is committed to be an ally in this effort to continually improve care for everyone.

This is a transformative time in medicine. Just as the practice of medicine must change, ABIM is adapting in order to empower doctors to make an everlasting impact on the lives of the people they serve.

In order to stay true to our mission during these times and acknowledging that one-time board certification does not recognize evolving medical knowledge, ABIM is working with physicians to create a Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program that provides choice, relevance and convenience while preserving the high standards that bring peace of mind to patients.

ABIM employs the following design principles and strategies while making improvements to the MOC program:

• Shared purpose and impact first. The solution should align with and advance the internal medicine community's shared purpose and have the desired impact on the community.
• Patients are the North Star. The solution should align with the public interest, answering the question: Is it good for patients?
• Simplicity and relevancy. The solutions should be easy to understand and applicable to many in the community. They should provide choice, relevance and convenience, keeping in mind a physician's daily burdens as a healthcare professional.
• Think internal and external. Both internal and external stakeholders should have contributed to the solution. The impact of these solutions on both ABIM and the community should always be considered.
• Always include the WHY, the HOW, and the WHO. Why did we come to this conclusion? How was it reached? Who was involved in the decision process?
• Balance community-centered design with ABIM's expertise and research. Conclusions of expert decision makers should be given appropriate consideration to the possible solutions that emerged from the community.
• Participation, not just communication. ABIM should develop solutions with the community and not for them. The community should be able to confidently believe that they took part in this process.
• Transparent decisions. ABIM should be able to easily explain why a particular decision was made and why another possible solution was rejected.

ABIM is a physician-led organization for doctors serving patients. It provides continuous independent assessment, an important tool to guarantee physician learning and also to allow doctors to demonstrate to the public that they are staying current.

ABIM governance includes a board, a council, and specialty boards– a diverse group of physicians and public members (including patient advocates, allied professionals and non-internist physicians) who offer their guidance and service for programmatic decisions.

More than 20 exam committees of practicing doctors come together to write and review questions for every exam. ABIM Board Certified physicians also review exam content to ensure it is relevant to their practice and help set exam standards.

ABIM also offers a call center, IT support and online tools to facilitate the process of enrolling into a continuous certification program for 200,000 physicians. The ABIM Academic Affairs, Assessment & Research, Psychometrics, and Clinical Affairs departments use specialized skills to create exams that are fair and medically/scientifically/academically accurate.

ABIM creates fair, defensible, psychometrically sound certification and MOC exams multiple times a year, every year for 20 medical subspecialties for over 200,000 diplomates in 60 countries across the globe (including 7,000 newly certified physicians every year). The organization issues thousands of credentials every year to certify that physicians have completed a certification process, which signals to the public that a physician is ready for independent practice in a specialty area. ABIM also reports whether a physician is maintaining this certification, which signals to the public that the physician is taking steps to stay current with medical knowledge.

ABIM is working toward building more choice, relevance and convenience into its MOC program and is engaging thousands of physicians to guide this process. The goal is to streamline the MOC program and make it more reflective of medical practice.

Completed
• Enhanced exam score reports to include more useful information about individual physician performance
• Conducted a research study on open-book testing to make assessments more reflective of how doctors practice.
• Completed survey with NORC to gain physician insights. Used insights to create meaningful communications and as a guide for all program changes.
• Launched a new longitudinal assessment in 12 specialties
• All MOC assessments are now open-book
• Launched Mobile App and set up maintenance support
• Established Sleep Medicine Advisory Committee and the Hospice and Palliative Care Advisory Committee, both of which are co-sponsored disciplines.
• Integrated User Testing from the Insights Network, physicians who engage with ABIM by providing feedback, to launch the mobile app and LKA platform.
• Invited physicians to provide feedback on the development of the Longitudinal Knowledge Assessment (LKA).


Ongoing/in progress
• Continuing Item Writing Task Force recruitment to support the writing of test questions for all specialties to support the LKA, while continuing to make improvements to the traditional long-form exam
• Working with medical specialty societies to co-create more options for the MOC program, including modular assessments and exploring ways to provide educational resources
• Launching two-year term DEI Taskforce that will support the work of the ABIM Senior Vice President of Communications and Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer and DEI Manager to guide the internal/external development and implementation of the ABIM DEI initiative
• Working with a third-party vendor to conduct ADA analysis on ABIM.org
• Using NORC to survey physicians to measure if sentiment has changed
• Continuing to expand LKA with more specialties rolling out in 2023