ABFM Continues Certification Process Upgrades

In its effort to emphasize continuous, lifelong learning, the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), in Lexington, Ky., continues to enhance its Maintenance of Certification for Family Physicians (MC-FP) program.

According to the most recent edition of the ABFM's newsletter (page 5 of 7-page PDF; About PDFs), as of Jan. 1, family physicians seeking to earn or maintain board certification must adhere to new MC-FP entry and re-entry requirements. Under the new schedule, a physician who does not pass the MC-FP exam within the three years following completion of residency training will be required to satisfy the MC-FP entry process to be eligible to take the exam and gain initial certification status.

This change also applies to previously certified family physicians who have never entered the MC-FP process.

Entry or re-entry to MC-FP requires that a physician

Family physicians unable to complete the entry/re-entry requirements by the deadline are encouraged to consider waiting until the next examination period to apply, because once the process is initiated, the physician "must complete all components within three years or restart the process again."

In addition to the MC-FP entry/re-entry process changes, the ABFM Board of Directors has defined "board-eligible" as pertaining strictly to the first seven years after loss of certification or completion of a residency training program accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

The ABFM board took this action to clear up confusion surrounding the term, which has never been recognized by member boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties but often is used by credentialing organizations and others to recognize noncertified physicians as having near-equivalent status.

"The abuse of the board-eligible term and status perpetuated the ability of poorly qualified physicians to practice outside of their initial certification, with a risk to patients, and resulted in a lack of relationship between the initial certifying examination and training as a concurrent/synergistic measure of physician competency," the ABFM said in its newsletter.

Beginning Jan. 1, family physicians who fall into this category will have seven years to pass their initial certification examination or, if previously certified, seven years from this date to successfully complete the MC-FP examination.

During the seven-year period, board-eligible physicians will be required to continue to meet the ongoing requirements to sit for the examination and must maintain a full, valid and unrestricted medical license, the newsletter noted. "After this seven-year period, the physician will lose the ability to refer to himself or herself as board-eligible and will need to re-enter training and complete at least one year of additional training in an ACGME-accredited family medicine residency before he or she will be allowed to reapply to sit for the examination."

Finally, several upcoming changes to MC-FP better emphasize continuous, lifelong learning. The new, continuous MC-FP process will apply to physicians who successfully completed the exam in 2011 and, thus, who are entering MC-FP beginning in 2012; those currently enrolled in MC-FP will not be affected until their next MC-FP exam.

The following comparison chart is intended to help physicians better understand the changes.