Disrupting and Streamlining Traditional Continuous Certification with Karen Schatten National Board of Physicians and Surgeons

Karen Schatten, the Associate Director of the National Board of Physicians and Surgeons, is encouraging consideration of alternative paths for continuous certification for board-certified physicians and surgeons. Since 2000, a bureaucratic process has been mandated for this ongoing education.  NSPAS aims to modernize and disrupt this process by offering an alternative path for continuing education that addresses physician burnout and provides relevant training to stay current in their medical specialties.   Karen explains, "The reason why the bureaucracy persists is, despite it not being really proven and physicians really having to collectively protest it, that requirement we now know after studying it for a number of years is it is actually more expensive. It's more burdensome. It creates a lot of irrelevant administrative burdens. Those forced programs are not a great match for physicians and what they do in day-to-day practice. It's often not clinically relevant and plays a critical role in exacerbating physician burnout and loss. So, we set out to change this sort of old-school thinking. That's what we exist to do, to provide that competition and choice in that continuing certification market for physicians."   "It's the problem of the monopoly on continuous certification. So, the same organization that provides the initial board certification exams also reports to the entire world who is board certified. The problem has come into play for physicians and worsened access to care issues because if physicians refuse their part two or continuing certifications, the organization has, since about 2012, listed physicians as not certified in these databases." "What's important to NBPAS is we've concerned ourselves with putting forth what we know works and what is evidence-based. The continuing education program that has a monopoly control over physician's livelihood has not been proven to impact patient outcomes and physician-led care. So what we've tried to do and how we've tried to forward our continuing certification pathway is to get accepted by all the major national accrediting bodies in the United States." #NBPAS #PhysicianShortage #PhysicianBurnout #BoardCertification #MedicalCredentialing #Healthcare NBPAS.org Download the transcript here