News from ABMS

Circulation Study Links Quality of Patient Care to Recertification; Lends Credence to Maintenance of Certification

As the umbrella organization for the 24 approved medical specialty boards in the United States, including ABIM, the American Board of Medical Specialties establishes broad standards for Maintenance of Certification and communicates information about these standards to strengthen public awareness about the value of specialty certification.

ABMS recently shared news of an important research study that appeared in the February 5, 2008 issue of Circulation. Although a growing body of research shows that board certification is linked to quality patient care, this study offers new data linking Maintenance of Certification to higher quality care. Researchers found a positive association between recent certification and the care of patients with hypertension and diabetes.

Improved treatment of high blood pressure – which the authors call treatment intensification – was delivered by 26.7 percent of physicians who were board certified the previous year, but only by 6.9 percent of physicians who were last certified 31 years previously. The study also found that for every decade since the physician was last board certified, the probability of treatment intensification decreased by 21.3 percent.

Researchers say they believe theirs is the first study that “analyzed a quantitative relationship between the length of time since the last board certification and quality of care.” The retrospective study analyzed 8,127 patients with diabetes mellitus who were being treated for hypertension by 301 internists at primary care practices affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston during a 5½-year period. The study measured intensification of therapy, which was defined as initiation of new antihypertensive medication, or increase in the dosage of the existing medicine. According to the study, treatment intensification was not significantly linked to the physician’s age, nor the time since the physician graduated from school.

ABIM’s Maintenance of Certification program components are exactly the kind of “intensive educational efforts” that the Brigham and Women’s research team concluded “could help improve the quality of care delivered by physicians.”