ABIM and Societies Work on Behalf of our Physician Community

ABIM leadership provided an update on its two-year maintenance pathway and the recently-announced enhancements to the exam experience, including an open-book option and Knowledge Check-In. Society representatives shared feedback on various aspects of the new program. This feedback was very helpful and suggested that many societies are optimistic about working with their memberships on the new model.

We reiterated ABIM’s commitment to exploring and forming new partnerships with medical societies, including working with societies to produce a new kind of maintenance pathway. We are in very early exploration stages with the American College of Physicians (ACP), the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC), and our hope is that these initial talks will ultimately produce a template for working with other societies.

A forward-looking discussion on quality improvement (QI) included representatives from the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, the Heart Rhythm Society, the Society of Hospital Medicine, and the American College of Rheumatology. The panel offered insight into principles-based criteria and included a patient perspective on potential ways to improve the quality of care delivered. The panel also discussed products from societies that have been successful in measuring quality improvement while fitting seamlessly into a health system’s workflow. Collectively, we discussed the role QI might play within a new health care landscape.

While not a new phenomenon, the concept of “fake news” has reminded us how quickly misinformation can be disseminated and accepted as fact. During the Summit, a panel of journalists and media experts discussed how the spread of misinformation, when coupled with confirmation bias, impacts the medical community and what its implications are for healthcare organizations. Patients seek credible information in this increasingly complex landscape, and the Internal Medicine community must work together to maintain trust by committing to an open-dialogue about evidence-based medicine and competency

The ways in which our organizations demonstrate value was both explicit and implicit in much of our conversations. Thinking about the roles we all play in helping make care better for patients — as well as ensuring there is a standard that they can count on — is a responsibility we all share.

I appreciated the opportunity to think collectively about how we can maintain trust with the public and also help our colleagues maintain trust with their patients.