President’s Message: Improving the Value of Board Certification and Advocating for the Specialty

As we look to the close of another year, I hope that you and your family are doing well and are able to enjoy some respite and quality time over the holidays—and that your clinical team continues to heal from the challenges of the pandemic.

This issue highlights improvements we are making to Family Medicine board certification to ensure its value to you. In clinical medicine value is often expressed as the equation — Quality plus Experience over Cost. At ABFM, we use each of these three variables to guide improvements in certification, frequently seeking input from Diplomates along the way. You’ll learn how we are working to increase the quality of certification activities, improving your experience with certification, while also identifying ways to reduce your burden.

These include the addition of longitudinal assessment (FMCLA) as a permanent alternative to the one-day exam, revision of all Knowledge Self-Assessments (KSAs), the addition of the National Journal Club, and providing a streamlined process to report on improvements you’re already making in practice for your Performance Improvement requirement. Additionally, you will read important updates on how we are advocating for improvements in residency education, focusing on leadership development, influencing health policy, and more.

Residency education is the future of Family Medicine and one of the most important issues facing residency programs today involves changes related to new program requirements for training family medicine residents. The Family Medicine Review Committee published a set of draft standards for Family Medicine residencies in December 2021. There are many specifics, but, overall, the proposed changes are the most significant since the founding of the specialty in 1969. These include a reemphasis on the residency practice as the curriculum, outreach into communities to address disparities of health outcomes, participating in residency learning networks, and implementing competency based medical education. Intended with this was some return of faculty dedicated time for education, which was previously taken away by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in 2019.  Over the summer, unfortunately, the ACGME Committee on Requirements rejected or weakened all the major changes proposed by the specialty in their release of the final version of the revised standards, which will become effective July 2023.

In response to these decisions the entire specialty of Family Medicine, including ABFM, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors (AFMRD), the Association of Departments of Family Medicine (ADFM), the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM), the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) and the American College of  Osteopathic Family Physicians (ACOFP), have formally requested that the ACGME Board of Directors reconsider their decision about faculty time and address the transparency of the process. You can find this open letter here. At the time of this newsletter, we await their response. Meanwhile, the ABFM Foundation, in partnership with the Family Medicine Review Committee, AFMRD, STFM, the ACOFP and others, are developing national initiatives to support the residencies and the specialty evolve residencies.  We must create the future that we want, and the country needs, ourselves. More to follow!

Finally, I am delighted to tell you about a wonderful new addition to the ABFM leadership team. Dr. Gary LeRoy has officially begun his role as the Senior Vice President of Diplomate Experience, working with Dr. Libby Baxley until her retirement next summer. Dr. LeRoy is familiar to many of you, having served as President of the American Academy of Family Physicians from 2019-2020. Dr. LeRoy has a very impressive track record in the leadership of medical organizations as well as service to his home community of Dayton, Ohio in many different roles, including service to students and faculty as Associate Dean for Student Affairs at the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine. He will be leading the ongoing development of our communication, outreach, and professionalism work at ABFM, and also plans to continue his clinical care at the federally qualified East Dayton Health Center. I am honored to have him as a colleague! Please join me in welcoming Dr. LeRoy to his new role in service to our specialty.

We look forward to hearing from you about the stories in this issue.

Thank you for all you do.

Warren Newton, MD MPH
President and CEO
American Board of Family Medicine