Your Voice: MOC is a farce ripe for repeal

I enjoyed the article, “Maintaining Certification: Gold standard or is luster tarnished?” (First Take, July 10, 2017), and the tenacity against the maintenance of certification (MOC) farce. I remember applying to take family medicine boards in 1996 while I finished my residency. At that time, we were required to submit several board questions, pay a fee to take boards and fly across the country to the testing site. 

 

Further reading: Docs sound off, question MOC

 

It seemed to me then that board certification had value. I knew many respected doctors in our hospital who were not board certified, however.

Today, our local hospital requires board certification. Many of the HMOs I accept require board certification. Many of the local doctors in my community that I (and other physicians) consider incompetent are board certified. Maintenance of certification is a joke in the medical community. This is clearly not a creation of physicians who wanted to impress upon their patients and peers that they are skilled at their craft. 

Recently, I completed a MOC module on cardiovascular disease. I spent most of my time on busy work-
imputing patient demographics from ICD-10 codes to medications. Do I put my patients with heart disease on aspirin, statins and beta blockers? Was this module put together by a grade-school teacher? 

 

In case you missed it: MOC-limiting laws spreading to additional states

 

Even if I did not perform these necessary tasks, I would have figured out how to fill out the other 38 patient forms after answering the first two. 

I look forward to the repeal of maintenance of certification.

David G. Patterson, DO
Flat Rock, Michigan

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