A look back at the first year of the new maintenance of certification program for family physicians.

Since the inception of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) almost 100 years ago, each of its member boards has either explicitly or implicitly addressed the issue of enhancing and assuring physician quality by setting standards for training and cognitive knowledge for their specialties. However, a number of reports issued in the late 1990s once again raised concerns about the health care system in the United States and cited a need for change to improve the delivery of health care to Americans. In response to these concerns, the American Board of Medical Specialties adopted a requirement that each of its 24 member boards develop specific mechanisms for implementing a Maintenance of Certification (MOC) process. As a result, the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), formerly the American Board of Family Practice, developed appropriate tools to assess and increase the depth and breadth of knowledge that family physicians use in practice on a daily basis, as well as to focus their knowledge base in key areas. As we move into an era when even greater national emphasis is being placed on the demonstration of quality, the ABFM believes that Maintenance of Certification for Family Physicians (MCFP) will help board-certified family physicians provide even better care to their patients by continuously measuring the 6 general competencies as acknowledged by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and the ABMS: patient care, medical knowledge, interpersonal and patient communication, professionalism, practicebased learning and improvement, and systemsbased practice. Each of the components of the MC-FP has been created to assure the public that physicians who hold our certificates continue to meet the highest standards and that their training, experience, and knowledge are sufficient to deliver care of the highest quality to people and their families. “The ABMS continues to work on behalf of its ambitious agenda to improve physician quality through its maintenance of certification program. Reasonable empirical evidence shows that certification and maintenance of certification programs will improve quality. . . . our polling data suggest the public is convinced that there is a connection, no doubt swayed by common sense.” JAMA 2004;292:9