The American Board of Internal Medicine has improved its Maintenance of Certification examinations with the input of the internal medicine community.
Beginning in the spring 2015, physicians will receive enhanced score reports with more information about their performance, as well as have access to an updated Internal Medicine MOC blueprint that outlines what internists in practice today are doing to better prepare for what will be on that exam.
"Both initiatives reflect ABIM's efforts to listen to physicians and engage the internal medicine community in the design of ABIM programs," said Richard J. Baron, MD, president and CEO of ABIM.
Highlighted below are eight things to know about the ABIM changes.
Enhanced score report
1. Starting with the spring 2015 MOC exams, examinees will receive score reports in a new, electronic format.
2. The new score report will include visual presentations of results, more detailed feedback about missed questions and links to supplemental information.
3. The new user-friendly score report was created in collaboration with ABIM board-certified physicians across several specialties through focus groups, a survey and one-on-one interviews.
Updated Internal Medicine MOC Exam blueprint
4. The updated blueprint will be implemented starting with the fall 2015 Internal Medicine MOC Exam and is now available on ABIM's website.
5. The ABIM Internal Medicine Board and Exam Committee collaborated with practicing general internists to inform the blueprint update by rating topics and related tasks for relative frequency and importance in practice.
6. Distribution of medical content areas on the blueprint and exam were adjusted based on these ratings, along with patient visit data from national surveys.
7. The blueprint now includes more details, with a task breakdown in addition to topics covered. It is color-coded to indicate how specific combinations of topics and tasks have been prioritized for selecting MOC exam questions.
8. ABIM is implementing a process that will give all ABIM board-certified physicians the opportunity to participate in annual blueprint review. This process will be introduced for some specialties by the end of 2015, and will be rolled out across all ABIM specialties over the next one to two years.