Thursday, December 10, 2009

More info on recognition of focused practice in hospital medicine

From Hospitalist News. New and of interest from this article:

The ABFM is now also offering a hospital medicine path for maintenance of certification, so that now both internists and family practitioners can earn recognition of focused practice in HM. This may accelerate the entry of family practitioners into hospital medicine. It may help address the current shortage of hospitalists and will likely change the landscape of hospital medicine in a number of interesting ways.

The first secure exam will take place October 25, 2010.

The self-evaluation module in the hospital medicine pathway is “not going to differ appreciably [from those used in the existing MOC process], but the vision going forward is [to have] more hospital-focused sets, on things like patient safety and transition of care,” said Dr. Wiese, who is a professor of medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans.

The practice improvement module for hospitalist certification “will focus on the ability to interact well with a team,” he said. “The candidate would sign up, would identify some practice area, collect data on the practice, design an intervention, and collect data again after a few months to show an improvement in practice delivery.”

The secure exam will differ from the standard internal medicine exam “in that it has much greater hospital medicine–focused content, but also questions on quality, patient safety, and transitions,” he continued.

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