October 2021

President’s Message

Greetings Colleagues,

We hope that you, your practice, and family are doing well. As I write this, the COVID delta variant appears to be leveling off but we know that many physicians and families have been impacted by the recent surge.

As these challenging times persist, we recognize the unique stressors and time constraints brought on by the pandemic and remain committed to supporting you by reducing the burden related to completing certification activities and by providing meaningful activities that can seamlessly be integrated into your everyday practice. I’m delighted to share with you some of the most recent updates and enhancements made to certification since our June edition of The Phoenix.

Read the full President’s Message here

2020 and 2021 Stage Requirements Receive Six Month Extension Due to COVID-19

All Diplomates with a 3-year stage that was scheduled to end on December 31, 2020 or December 31, 2021 will have an additional 6 months to complete all certification activities, including stage and exam requirements. The new deadline to complete all stage requirements is June 30, 2022. This 6-month extension is in addition to the earlier COVID extensions provided in 2020 and is being offered to help those who have been impacted by the recent delta surge.

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Physicians with 2022 Exam Requirement Eligible for FMCLA

Beginning in January 2022, we will officially launch the permanent version of Family Medicine Certification Longitudinal Assessment (FMCLA) as an alternative to the one-day Family Medicine Certification exam. If you are a Diplomate who has an exam requirement due in 2022, you will be eligible to choose either FMCLA or the one-day examination on December 3, 2021 when the online application is available inside your MyABFM Portfolio.

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New! Partnership with AAFP Now Awards KSA Credit for ALSO® Provider Course

To reduce burden and find innovative ways for Diplomates to earn credit for activities they are already engaged in, ABFM and AAFP have partnered to provide certification credit for an AAFP activity. If you are a physician who completed the AAFP’s Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO®) Provider Course this year, you will receive 10 points toward your 50-point stage requirement. This course can also meet your KSA requirement if you have not already done so. This credit will automatically be transferred from AAFP to ABFM periodically.

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More Tips to Help You Stay on Track for Stage Ending Requirements

If you prefer to stay on schedule and not delay your certification activity requirements, we have compiled a list of tips that you may find helpful in completing your requirements more efficiently.

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ABFM Diplomate Shares Story About Using the Health Disparities/Equity Self-Directed PI Activity to Drive Behavior Change

As a family physician who is a longtime nursing home medical director, Karl Steinberg, MD, CMD, FAAFP wanted to do something “more action-oriented” that might result in some behavioral change. Dr. Steinberg implemented an “Improving Awareness of Systemic Racism and Microaggressions in Long-Term Care” project to address communication and staff literacy on issues of diversity and inclusion in a nursing home setting. The project addressed awareness of microaggressions affecting nursing home staff and residents, including infantilization of the residents and racist language.

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Revised Guidelines for Professionalism, Licensure, and Personal Conduct

In May 2021, we announced a revision of ABFM’s Guidelines for Professionalism, Licensure and Personal Conduct. The result of more than a year of careful study and deliberations, these revisions serve to improve the clarity of the process by which board-certified physicians are evaluated for medical professionalism and provide greater flexibility to the Professionalism Committee of the ABFM Board of Directors that reviews these individual cases.

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Continuity of Care – It Matters to Patients

Continuity of care is one of the pillars of high-quality primary care. It matters to patients and it is essential to a high-functioning health care system.  The national Measures That Matter for Primary Care initiative, coming from the Center for Professionalism and Value in Health Care, is creating a suite of new clinical quality measures aimed at simplifying and improving measurement in primary care practice, including four core measures: Person-Centered Primary Care, Continuity of Care, Comprehensiveness of Care, and Low Value Care, all in the process of development to become endorsed clinical quality measures in the future.

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Residency Papers Published: A Re-Envisioning Residency Education Updage

If you have an interest in the future of family medicine residency education and would like to have input into the standards that are currently being drafted by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) for family medicine, we encourage you to visit the Re-Envisioning Family Medicine Residency Education website, hosted by ABFM, to access the many focus group reports, surveys and papers developed for the ACGME to consider when writing the new standards.

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Steven Lin, MD, Selected as 2021 NAM Puffer/ABFM Fellow

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) has selected Steven Lin as the 2021 James C. Puffer, MD/American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) Fellow.  Dr. Lin is a clinical associate professor in the Division of Primary Care and Population Health at Stanford University School of Medicine, Family Medicine Service Chief at Stanford Health Care, and Head of Technology Innovation for Primary Care and Population Health. He is the founding director of the Stanford Healthcare AI Applied Research Team (HEA3RT), a first-of-its-kind center dedicated to translational research on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in health care with the mission to bring leading edge technologies from “code to bedside.”

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Pisacano Leadership Foundation Announces 2021 Pisacano Scholars

The Board of Directors of the Pisacano Leadership Foundation, Inc. is pleased to announce its selections for the 2021 Pisacano Scholarships.  The scholarships, valued at up to $28,000 each, are awarded to up to 10 medical students per year who are attending U.S. medical schools and demonstrate a strong commitment to the specialty of Family Medicine.  To be considered, each applicant must show demonstrable leadership skills, superior academic achievement, strong communication skills, identifiable character and integrity, and a noteworthy level of community service.

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Thank you to the more than 10,000 Diplomates and residents who completed the 2021 Communication Survey. Look for findings to be shared in the next issue of The Phoenix.