Editor's Page
Board Certification:
What’s Next?
Rich Kirkner
Editor-in-Chief
For you and your colleagues, the issue of board certification won’t go away any too soon. (I promise, though, this is the last you’ll hear from me about this for a while.)
But the iron’s still hot, so I’ll strike it. The AOA House of Delegates
has endorsed the right approach toward the American Board of Optometric
Practice: Keep it on the back burner; call a “summit”; invite representatives
from the American Academy of Optometry and other key optometric organizations;
have the AOA pick up the tab; and have the committee present a report to
next year’s AOA Congress.
It’s a good first step. Of course, in this case it’s a second step, but that round ended a while back.
However, before this so-called summit of optometric heavyweights convenes, a couple questions beg answers:
1. Does optometry really need board certification?This a double-edged sword. If optometrists don’t support board certification, can you make a case that they need it? What you and your colleagues do need is a full, fair debate on the issue. Pro and con, in and out, from all angles. Only then can you make an educated judgment whether you need board certification.
2. How do optometrists feel about board certification?
The tail must not wag this dog. If the doctors bending their backs repeating “Which is better, one or two?” aren’t behind it, board certification won’t fly. Period.
Meanwhile, the varied medical boards themselves aren’t making a good case for the board certification. The American Medical News reports that failure rates for some board recertification tests—including that of the American Board of Family Practice—are rising. Rising, too, is the number of health plans that mandate their member doctors pass board recertification. Ditto for the number of doctors getting bounced off panels because they can’t get recertified. Some specialties have failure rates as high as 14%. Not the way optometry wants to go with board certification.
This is the kind of information you need so you can make a sensible
decision about this hot potato. Your leaders owe you a full hearing on
the issue of board certification. You owe them your honest opinions.
Above all else, you owe your patients the best care they can get. If
board certification doesn’t measure up to that, what’s the use?
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© Review of Optometry OnLine
August 15, 2000