The ABIM has selected exam committee members for internal medicine, critical care medicine, endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, gastroenterology, geriatric medicine, hematology, infectious disease, medical oncology, nephrology, pulmonary disease, and rheumatology. Members of the committees will be announced in July.
The cardiology committee will contain a handful of tertiary specialties, including adult congenital heart disease, advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology, cardiovascular disease, clinical cardiac electrophysiology, and interventional cardiology.
Other specialties will be addressed in the near future.
Acceptance slow
So far, the ABIM’s governance and structural shifts seem to have largely gone unnoticed by internists, said Dr. Baron. In part, it’s because governance is a bit of sausage making that may not be of interest to outsiders. But it’s also because of the understandable focus on the changes to the MOC process, he observed.
And, the changes to the ABIM board and its subspecialty boards aren’t likely to have an impact on certification or recertification exams in the near future, Dr. Baron said.
But it will have an impact. And the addition of nonphysicians may not be wholly embraced.
Dr. Baron recalled that while giving a talk about the governance changes at the American College of Cardiology’s annual meeting in March, an ACC physician member stood up and said that he could not imagine why the ABIM thought it made sense to have a patient on the board.
"[He] congratulated me with great sarcasm on my political correctness," Dr. Baron said. " ‘What do [patients] know about being a cardiologist?’ " the physician asked.
This is "a view that many members of our physician community have," Dr. Baron noted, but he believes others will see the merits of bringing in other stakeholders.
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*Correction 4/24/14: A previous version of this story misstated that the ABIM would rename the subspecialty boards. The story has been updated.