GrandfatherMed
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- Aug 12, 2018
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For MD medical students, if you think CS2 is bad, you should beware of an ongoing credentialling civil war that continues in the bureaucratic halls of medicine. The "war" is being waged between working physicians and the 24 member boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties that issue board certificates after you complete your residency.
From about 1936 through 1990, "board certification" was a lifetime credential. This credential was changed after 1990 to be "time-limited," meaning doctors now have to "re-certify" every 7-10 years depending on specialty (yup, more tests, and more fees). The boards argue that this is because the "public demands" that doctors "keep up" in their field, but there are little to no INDEPENDENT study that demonstrates improved patient outcomes, safety, or quality of care between doctors with lifetime certification vs those with time-limited certification. In fact, most if not all of the studies supportive of time-limited certification are written by people with significant conflicts of interest. Careful research has disclosed the improper use of testing fees to purchase expensive $2.3M condos complete with chauffeur-driven town cars, spousal travel, gym club memberships and off-shoring of testing fees to the Cayman Islands to fund board members' retirement accounts. All of this is supported by the ACGME (Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education), in large part because they sell the data collected to third parties in the form of daily updates to your board certification status (insurance companies use this info to deny payments). In short, time-limited certification is a racket and there are "grandfathers" like me (internal medicine boarded in 1989), who are working to expose the corruption and self-dealing inherent to this process.
Because people who received "board certification" before 1990 were exempted from re-certifying, we believe medical students and younger doctors are unjustifiably discriminated against having to participate in this process and will be for the entirety of your upcoming careers. (DO's just won a lawsuit against the AOA regarding their requirement that Osteopathic Continuous Certification be tied to AOA membership).
While this is entirely voluntary, I encourage you to learn more and consider giving whatever you can to our GoFundMe page (just google the "Dr. Wes blog" for the link) that is starting legal action to end this injustice on a grassroots basis. There are links within the GoFundMe page "story" that explain some of the potential tax filing discrepancies we believe occurred to permit this ruse to continue and links to other references explaining who we are and how the raised funds will be used.
We realize this is a David vs Goliath proposition, but think we have a strong (legal) case. Together working doctors hope to make a difference and improve working conditions for our profession by ridding ourselves of this unnecessary and potentially fraudulent distraction from patient care. Happy to answer any questions you might have.
Thanks for the opportunity to share this information with the larger medical school community. Sorry, there are no links, but I'd have to post 5 messages to this forum before I'd be permitted to add them and I don't want to waste anyone's time.
I hope this has been informative. Good luck with your studies. Medicine still is a great profession, especially when working doctors stick together.
From about 1936 through 1990, "board certification" was a lifetime credential. This credential was changed after 1990 to be "time-limited," meaning doctors now have to "re-certify" every 7-10 years depending on specialty (yup, more tests, and more fees). The boards argue that this is because the "public demands" that doctors "keep up" in their field, but there are little to no INDEPENDENT study that demonstrates improved patient outcomes, safety, or quality of care between doctors with lifetime certification vs those with time-limited certification. In fact, most if not all of the studies supportive of time-limited certification are written by people with significant conflicts of interest. Careful research has disclosed the improper use of testing fees to purchase expensive $2.3M condos complete with chauffeur-driven town cars, spousal travel, gym club memberships and off-shoring of testing fees to the Cayman Islands to fund board members' retirement accounts. All of this is supported by the ACGME (Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education), in large part because they sell the data collected to third parties in the form of daily updates to your board certification status (insurance companies use this info to deny payments). In short, time-limited certification is a racket and there are "grandfathers" like me (internal medicine boarded in 1989), who are working to expose the corruption and self-dealing inherent to this process.
Because people who received "board certification" before 1990 were exempted from re-certifying, we believe medical students and younger doctors are unjustifiably discriminated against having to participate in this process and will be for the entirety of your upcoming careers. (DO's just won a lawsuit against the AOA regarding their requirement that Osteopathic Continuous Certification be tied to AOA membership).
While this is entirely voluntary, I encourage you to learn more and consider giving whatever you can to our GoFundMe page (just google the "Dr. Wes blog" for the link) that is starting legal action to end this injustice on a grassroots basis. There are links within the GoFundMe page "story" that explain some of the potential tax filing discrepancies we believe occurred to permit this ruse to continue and links to other references explaining who we are and how the raised funds will be used.
We realize this is a David vs Goliath proposition, but think we have a strong (legal) case. Together working doctors hope to make a difference and improve working conditions for our profession by ridding ourselves of this unnecessary and potentially fraudulent distraction from patient care. Happy to answer any questions you might have.
Thanks for the opportunity to share this information with the larger medical school community. Sorry, there are no links, but I'd have to post 5 messages to this forum before I'd be permitted to add them and I don't want to waste anyone's time.
I hope this has been informative. Good luck with your studies. Medicine still is a great profession, especially when working doctors stick together.
