So, I suspect we will have some additional attendees filtering in as the session begins, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for joining today's session, where we will be discussing the ABPM certification process. We will be focusing on updates on initial certification, as well as the ABPM's new continuing certification program. This session is being streamed, so thank you to all of those who are participating today virtually. And a few housekeeping notes. If you haven't already, please download the AOHC 2023 event app. This app is called Swap Card, and it will tell you everything you need to know about the meeting. If you need assistance, please go to AECOM membership booth in the foyer on the fifth floor. You can evaluate and claim credit by navigating to this session in the meeting app. There is a link towards the bottom left within the session. Please do not forget to silence your phones and other devices. And AECOM staff do have red lanyards and buttons identifying them as such, so if you do require any assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out to one of those individuals. Without further ado, I will get started with today's presentation. My name is Kevin Patrick, and I am the ABPM's continuing certification manager. I have been with ABPM since 2017 and in my current role as the CCP manager since 2019. One of the first things I thought would be important to touch on today is the ABPM's new physician portal. If many of you are diplomats of the ABPM, you might know that you have not had access to your physician portal since late November of last year. We were working with a new IT vendor called ACGI to develop an improved diplomate and applicant experience via a new online physician portal. This portal launched on March 15th of 2023, and instructions for accessing your physician portal were communicated to you via email at that time. If you did not receive an email with instructions for accessing your account, please contact a member of the ABPM staff via email at abpm.org, and we'll be happy to provide you with those instructions so you can log in and access your account. The account is going to be used for not only applicants who are interested in achieving board certification with the ABPM, but also throughout your participation in the ABPM's continuing certification program. If you are a new user on the ABPM's website, that being someone who has not previously submitted an application with ABPM or does not currently maintain an active board certification with ABPM, you will be required to create a new account. You can do this by visiting the ABPM's website and selecting the physician portal icon. Once you do so, it will direct you to this page. If you are a new user, you will need to select the new account icon, and that will navigate you through the registration process. If you are a current diplomate of the ABPM and you have previously registered your account on the ABPM's website, when you log in, you should see a physician portal looking similar to the one presented on the screen now. It's going to provide you with information regarding your primary contact information. It's going to outline your continuing certification requirements and allow you to track your participation in fulfilling those requirements. It's also going to provide you with information regarding your certification, including your certification number, start and end dates, and also let you know of any invoices associated with your account. Since we do now have an annual fee, which we will discuss later in the presentation, that information will also be available on your physician portal. One of the newest enhancements to the portal is the ability to download a written verification of certification. I know in the past we had many diplomates who would contact ABPM requesting a letter from the board confirming that they do hold an active board certification with us. This functionality is now available directly through your physician portal. So once you log into your account, you can navigate to, well, you can use the top navigation bar to go to My Account, and from there you can download a written verification. This is going to provide you with confirmation that you are currently certified by the ABPM in the specialty or subspecialty in which you hold board certification. It will also provide you with information regarding your certification start and end dates. If you log into your account and for some reason you do not have access to this feature, please reach out and let us know. We can still prepare those for you ourselves, but we thought this was a great feature so that way you do not need to reach out to ABPM staff and then wait for one to prepare it for you. It is available to you at the touch of your finger. Before we dive into the ABPM's new continuing certification program, I wanted to provide you with some updates regarding the initial certification process. So by way of background, board certification with an ABMS member board is a rigorous process of testing and peer evaluation. Once a physician has achieved board certification with an ABMS member board, they then participate in a board's continuing certification program where they show their dedication to professional growth and excellence. These programs are designed to support physicians in that regard by focusing on activities that put patient care, practice enhancement, and lifelong learning as the cornerstones of that program. The ABPM does certify physicians in the specialties of aerospace medicine, occupational and environmental medicine, and public health and general preventive medicine, as well as the subspecialties of addiction medicine, clinical informatics, medical toxicology, and undersea and hyperbaric medicine. On the screen, I've outlined some important application dates for those of you who may be interested in achieving board certification for the first time or if you are interested in adding another board certification to your physician portal. The application process is currently open. That process opened on March 15th of this year, and candidates will have until June 31st to submit their application. The ABPM does have a late application window. So we have a late application window from July 1st through July 15th. The only thing I would note about submitting an application during the late application window is there is a late fee associated with the application itself. Diplomates who will be sitting for the initial certification exam will be able to register for the exam beginning on May 24th. The exam will be administered at Pearson VUE Testing Centers beginning October 16th and continuing through November 5th of 2023. If you are a candidate seeking initial certification, maybe you are currently in a residency program and are not slated to complete the program until June, we still recommend that you log in and submit your application at your earliest convenience. The reason for that is you don't actually need to be completed with the program in order to submit the application. You just need to be close to completing it, and we will reach out to your program director so they can provide verification that you are scheduled to complete it in the coming months. Why that's important, there are a limited number of exam registration slots on each day or time depending on the exam location that you would like to test at. So having your application submitted and approved early will allow you to register for the exam as soon as that window opens next month. That will give you a better opportunity to select a date, time, and location that is most convenient for you. Some other updates about the initial certification process. For many of you, if you took the initial board certification exam prior to 2022, you may recall that you were required to sit for two separate examinations. There was a specialty exam and a core exam. Beginning in 2022, the ABPM combined these examinations into a single 200-question multiple choice exam, which includes 150 specialty-specific questions and 50 core questions. Those 50 core questions are administered across all three specialty examinations to ensure that candidates are completing the same core questions on the exam. The exam is delivered and for one-hour time blocks, and it's administered over four hours and 30 minutes. So I feel like this is the reason why we are all here. It has been a long time coming and a work in progress. The ABPM announced that we were transitioning away from the former maintenance of certification program. I want to say it was back in 2019. We had originally launched a transitional maintenance of certification program to get us to this point. And the board was pleased to announce the launch of this program on January 1st of this year. This program was developed in compliance with the new standards for continuing certification mandated by the American Board of Medical Specialties and in response to feedback from ABPM diplomats and the surveys we conducted in 2020 and 2021. The CCP is designed to help demonstrate a physician's exceptional expertise in a particular specialty and subspecialty of medical practice and to promote professional growth and excellence. We wanted to sum up the program in three words to keep it, you know, at the front of our mind. And what we thought best represented this new program was that it is simple, it's relevant, and it's innovative. I hope that after we go over the requirements of this new program, you'll agree. So to ensure that all of our diplomats feel comfortable with implementation of the new requirements of the continuing certification program, the program will be released in three separate and distinct stages. Stage one or phase one of the program launched this year, so January 1st of 2023, and will continue until December 31st of 2024. Phase two will launch on January 1st of 2025, and will continue until December 31st of 2029. And then we will launch phase three on January 1st of 2030, and it will continue until December 31st of 2039. So over the next couple slides, we're going to go through what are your specific requirements for maintaining board certification during phase one, which will get you through the 2023 and 2024 calendar years. Phase one requirements include review of professional standing, lifelong professional development, and the ABPM annual fee. The first item, review of professional standing, simply requires that at all times, ABPM diplomats shall maintain a full, valid, and unrestricted license to practice medicine in all states, territories, or jurisdictions in which the diplomat has a license to practice medicine. This requirement is consistent with the former MOC part one requirement of professional standing, and can be tracked through your physician portal on the ABPM's website. So once you log in, you can see all of the medical license information associated with your account, and if you do renew your medical license, you can update that information accordingly. The ABPM is working with the American Board of Medical Specialties to connect our databases, so that way, if they receive any medical license information from FSMB, they can then send that to ABPM, so you will no longer be required to manually make these updates. They will be made for you. We hope to have that functionality launched, I would probably say, late quarter two of this year, so I would recommend reviewing your physician portal in the coming months for those updates, and just to make sure that the medical license information we have on file is accurate. Your next requirement for maintaining board certification this year is the lifelong professional development requirement. This year, you are required to earn 20 AMA PRA Category 1 CME credits, or their equivalent. Six of those credits need to be specific to your ABPM board certification. That is going to be the same requirement for 2024, so 20 CME credits, six of which are relevant to your board certification. You will attest to compliance with the CME credit requirement through your physician portal on the ABPM's website. So once you log in, you will see a link that says CME attestation, or submit CME attestation. Once you select that, it's going to outline this requirement, and you will simply state, yes, I completed this requirement, and you'll submit your attestation. The ABPM is not requiring diplomats to upload certificates of CME credits earned, nor are you required to provide a transcript of CME credits earned throughout the calendar year. This is being completed on an honor system during Phase 1. We have many diplomats who are certified by multiple member boards of ABMS, and we understand that there is a need for reciprocity. That's why 14 of the credits that you're earning for one of those other boards can be applied toward the 20 CME credit requirement. Just six of the credits need to be specific to your certificates. And we are allowing you to determine which educational activities are relevant to your ABPM certificate. You're obviously in the best position to decide what activities are relevant to you, your practice, your patients, so we're allowing you the flexibility to do that. During Phase 1, ABPM will not conduct an audit of attestations, but we will begin auditing attestations of compliance with this requirement during Phase 2. So we'll talk more about that in the coming slides. The final requirement for maintaining certification this year is to pay the ABPM annual fee. The fee can be submitted through your physician portal on the ABPM website, and the deadline to submit payment is December 31st. So a little bit about the annual fee. I think a lot of people that we speak to, they're still thinking, all right, my certificate is coming to an end. When do I take the MOC exam? Great news. We don't have an MOC exam anymore. So we are moving away from the MOC examination and implementing a new longitudinal assessment program during Phase 2. But as we're shifting this program and it's becoming more of an annual engagement with the board, logging in and submitting the attestation annually, eventually participating in an annual assessment program, we are also switching to the annual fee. So payment for the annual fee will cover your participation in the ABPM's continuing certification program. It will also cover the assessment component of that program. So unlike in the past where you had to submit payment for the exam fee at the end of your certification cycle. You will not have the lump sum payment later on your certification cycle. Everything will be covered through the annual fee structure. If you will have one certificate with ABPM, the annual fee is $175. If you have two certificates with ABPM, the first certificate is $175, the second certificate is $125, and if you have three or more certificates with ABPM, the third or more certificate are $100 each. And again, payment is submitted through your physician portal on the ABPM website, and the deadline to submit payment is December 31st. So this is an overview of all of your requirements for phase one. As we noted, the review of professional standing, maintain an active license to practice medicine at all times, lifelong professional development, earn 20 CME credits annually, six of which are relevant to your ABPM certification, pay the annual fee, and what we'll be doing is we will be extending the certificate expiration dates for those diplomats who log in and participate in the ABPM's new CCP structure. We have a lot of diplomats who are coming up on expiration on January 31st of 2024, and I know that they're starting to get questions from their employer or their credentialers. What's going on with your certificate? Have you extended it? Are you renewing your certification? ABPM is working with its IT developer to update the certificate expiration dates for anyone whose board certification expires before December 31st of 2029 to extend the certificate to December 31st of 2029. The reason why we have chosen this date is because it coincides with the conclusion of phase two of the new continuing certification program, which does include that assessment component. So again, if you have a certificate expiring in 2024, five, six, seven, or eight, you log into your ABPM account, you begin participating in the new continuing certification program this year, your certificate expiration date will be extended to December 31st of 2029. Again, we hope to have this functionality released later in quarter two, so be sure to log back into your physician portal to review it and make sure your certificate is being updated. We will also be sending out email communications once the certificates are updated, so that way you know to log back into your account where you can download the written verification and provide that to your employer or credentialer showing that yes, my board certification has been extended and will remain active. That brings us to phase two of the continuing certification program. Again, phase two will launch on January 1st of 2025 and will conclude on December 31st of 2029. Phase two requirements are consistent with those of phase one. You will be required to maintain an active license to practice medicine. You will earn 20 CME credits annually, six of which are relevant to your ABPM board certification. You will begin participating in the longitudinal assessment program, which we will discuss here shortly, and you will have the annual fee payment due by December 31st of each calendar year. So once again, maintain active license to practice medicine. This should not be anything new, but we understand that this can be sometimes a little bit confusing for our diplomates. Once again, you track this through your physician portal and any updates we receive from ABMS will be presented to you there as well. We've already discussed the lifelong professional development requirement. The only difference during the, well, the only difference for lifelong professional development in phase two is going to be the inclusion of the audit process. What ABPM will do during phase two is audit up to 5% of attestations submitted, just ensuring that the physician did in fact earn their 20 CME credits and that six of them were relevant to their board certification. Once again, the diplomate is in the best position to determine which credits are relevant to their specialty. So if you are selected for the audit, you will simply indicate which of those six credits are applicable to your ABPM certification. In the event a diplomate is selected for an audit and they are unable to provide documentation confirming completion of 20 CME credits for that calendar year, the diplomate certificate will be suspended. There will be a six month grace period for the diplomate to complete the 20 CME credits and provide documentation for ABPM to review. However, we do think this comes down to a professionalism requirement in the sense that you submitted the attestation saying, yes, I completed 20 credits. You did not actually earn 20 CME credits. So for the next two calendar years, you will be automatically audited to ensure that you are continuing to earn the 20 CME credits annually. Additionally, if the requirement is missed, you're unable to provide the documentation, your certificate is revoked, you will be subject to reentry requirements at a later date should you choose to reinstate your board certification. The ABPM does have a reinstatement pathway available to any former diplomate who would like to return their board certification to an active status. We do have information regarding the reinstatement pathway on the ABPM's website, but a high level overview is you will need to earn 100 CME credits in the previous five years. 30 of those credits need to be relevant to your ABPM board certification. You need to complete a patient safety course, and you need to complete an improvement in medical practice activity with an ABPM partner specialty society. So if you are a former diplomate and you're here wondering, can I reinstate my board certification? Yes, you can. You just need to complete the requirements of that reinstatement pathway and then submit a formal written request to ABPM for review. Again, additional information regarding this process can be found on the ABPM's website, but if you do have any questions or concerns, you can also reach out to a member of ABPM staff and we'll be happy to assist you with this process. Coming back to phase two of the Continuing Certification Program and the inclusion of the new Longitudinal Assessment Program. So once again, the Longitudinal Assessment Program replaces the former high stakes maintenance of certification exam and all ABPM diplomates holding time limited certificates, those being certificates issued after 1998, are required to participate in this new program. To participate, you will simply log in to your ABPM physician portal and complete 30 specialty specific questions annually. These questions are open book, open resource questions. So you can use any resources available to you to assist you in answering the question. However, you cannot consult your peers or colleagues to assist you in answering your questions. So really anything else is open to you, just not discussing the questions with your peers or colleagues. You will be required to participate in longitudinal assessment for each certification you hold with the ABPM. So if you are certified in occupational and environmental medicine, as well as public health and general preventive medicine, you will need to answer 30 questions for each of your certificates. Once again, it's going to be open book, open resource. The questions are actually not timed. So you have an unlimited amount of time to respond to a question. However, once you open the question, you do need to submit an answer. So why is that important to know? A lot of times webpages can time out if you leave the page too long. So if you open a question and then you step away to get something to eat or drink or go for a walk and you come back, if for some reason your internet connection was disrupted and your question is no longer there, that question will be marked as incorrect. So we definitely recommend that take as much time as you need to respond to the item, but we encourage you to stay looking at the item and make sure you don't walk away and do experience some sort of internet disruption. These are multiple choice questions and they're meant to be walking around knowledge. So this isn't meant to be an item that's going to trick you. It's not meant to be an item that would be covered on an initial certification exam. They're really designed to keep our diplomates up to date of what's going on within the specialty or subspecialty for which they hold board certification. The unique thing about longitudinal assessment is that immediately following submission of an answer, you are provided with whether or not your response was correct or incorrect. You're also provided with the correct answer if you answered it incorrectly and an explanation for why the correct answer is the correct answer and the incorrect answers are incorrect answers. This is really an educational opportunity if you have identified a knowledge gap and you may then address that knowledge gap through the explanation as well as the references that will be included for each item. We are in discussions with our partner specialty societies to enhance this program as well. We understand that organizations such as ACOM have great educational activities available to their members or anyone who is interested in completing these activities and we would love to work with them to incorporate educational activities into longitudinal assessment at a future date. So again, we really wanna use this program as an opportunity to assist our diplomates in keeping up to date with what is going on in their specialties and then again, help them address any knowledge gaps that they may identify throughout the longitudinal assessment program. ABPM will require diplomates to earn a minimum passing score on four of the five years of the Administration of Longitudinal Assessment. At this time, ABPM is not preemptively determining what the minimum passing score is going to be. We are going to wait and look at the performance of our diplomate population throughout longitudinal assessment in the first year, so 2025. We'll wait and see how are our diplomates performing. We will then conduct a psychometric analysis on all of the items administered on the assessment to determine if any items scored incredibly poorly. You know, was there not one clear best answer? Was there a flaw in the way the item was written or the answer options? If we do identify that there are items that did not perform as well as we had expected, those could be removed from scoring. That's one of the reasons why we are waiting to determine a minimum passing score until we see how our diplomates are performing in the assessment, and then we can go from there. One thing I would note is that longitudinal assessment is not meant to be the high-stakes MOC exam. This is not meant to be an assessment that is going to determine, you know, if I don't get a passing score, is my board certification at risk? That is not our intention, that is not our plan. Right now, the board is looking at models that would ensure or will encourage at least 95% of the diplomate population to achieve a passing score, and we're really just wanting to ensure that anyone who does miss an item has the educational opportunities to address that knowledge gap. So don't be concerned that there is a minimum passing score. We definitely wanna work with our diplomate population to ensure that as long as they are showing a best effort, as long as they are keeping up-to-date and addressing knowledge gaps that they identify, they can continue to maintain their board certification with the ABPM. Going back, I guess one thing I failed to mention was we might find some diplomates who do not earn a minimum passing score in four of the five years. We understand that life happens. Not everyone can give their best effort on these assessments every year, but if for some reason you do not achieve a minimum passing score in four of the five years, there will be a remediation activity. Essentially what that's going to be is identifying the knowledge gaps that you've identified over the five-year assessment, and then taking targeted CME educational activities or other supporting documentation to help you address those knowledge gaps to keep your board certification in good standing. So even if you aren't achieving the minimum passing score every year, we're going to have activities available for you to ensure that you can continue to maintain your board certification. One other thing about longitudinal assessment, I mentioned it's 30 questions annually. Those questions will become available on January 1st of every year, and you will have until December 31st to answer those questions. So you do not need to answer all the questions in one sitting. You can answer them at any frequency that works best for you and your schedule. You can answer them one a week, you can answer a couple a month, or if you're feeling incredibly motivated and you're in the zone, you can definitely answer all 30 in one sitting. That's going to be up to you. Consistent with phase one of the continuing certification program, diplomates will be required to submit payment for the annual fee for each year of phase two. And once again, that annual fee will be submitted through your physician portal on the ABPM's website. Once we conclude phases one and two of the continuing certification program, we will launch phase three on January 1st of 2030, and it will continue until December 31st of 2039. I would consider this the first full 10 year certification cycle for the new continuing certification program. And it will include similar, or well, consistent requirements with phases one and two. We will continue to maintain a review of professional standing requirement, so you will need to maintain an active license to practice medicine. We will continue to have the lifelong professional development requirement annually, so 20 CME credits, six of which are relevant to your ABPM certification. We will have the longitudinal assessment program component, 30 questions every year for each certificate you hold with the ABPM. Those questions will be relevant to your specialty. They will be available at any frequency in which you would like to choose them. We will have the minimum passing score requirement, as well as remediation for diplomates who do not achieve a minimum passing score in four or five years. And then we will also layer in a new improving health and healthcare requirement. For many of you who have participated in the former maintenance of certification program, you're probably pretty familiar with MOC part four, improvement in medical practice. For the former MOC program, diplomates were required to earn two, or well, complete two IMP activities every 10 years, one activity every five years. So this activity is consistent with that structure. One activity every five years. These activities are designed to positively impact and improve a diplomate's practice. And unfortunately, right now, that is as much information as I can provide you on the improvement in health and healthcare requirement. The reason for that is because these requirements are included in the continuing certification standards mandated by the American Board of Medical Specialties. However, they have not provided us with direct guidance on what they are requiring for the IHHC activity. Since ABMS has not made it very clear what is going to be required to fulfill this component, ABPM does not feel comfortable requiring having our diplomate population complete one of these activities until that information is made available. That is why the first activity would not be required until Phase 3 of the new Continuing Certification Program. If that is one every five years, it means the first activity would not need to be completed until before December 31st of 2024. So we have a very long runway ahead of us to work with ABMS to better understand this requirement, to then work with our partner specialty societies such as ACOM to create activities that are going to bring value to our diplomates. I know in the past when it came to MOC Part 4, we have a lot of physicians who maybe don't work in direct patient-facing roles. And completing an activity was challenging and they had to become very creative of how can I fit what I'm doing into this activity that is required for my board certification. We do not want that to be the case moving forward. We really want to embrace what our diplomates are doing in their practice. We already know you're doing practice improvement and we want to find ways to make sure that what you're doing is going to count when it comes to participating in this program. So I would say more information on this requirement to come. I would probably recommend reviewing the website during Phase 2 for more information, but also ABPM does send out regular reminders of updates to our programs, whether that be via email or our ABPM newsletter. So I would say once we receive the information from ABMS, we'll be sharing that with you as well. And the final requirement for Phase 3 of the Continuing Certification Program is again the annual fee requirement. $175 every year before December 31st of that year. The slides are very long. They're very dense. And I think that this graph does a great job at providing an overview of the three phases of the Continuing Certification Program, as well as your requirements for maintaining board certification in each phase. We actually have a really great handout of this table at the ABPM's exhibit space. So I do anticipate that this meeting will run just a little bit shorter than the 9-15 cutoff. And if so, you can definitely make your way to the exhibit hall, booth 306, where we have plenty of copies of this handout. And we also have ABPM staff members there to address any questions you may have regarding your board certification, regarding the initial application process, or really just any other questions you might have regarding ABPM in general. With that said, I would like to open the session up to questions. If you don't feel comfortable asking questions now, you can always contact the ABPM at abpm.org. As I mentioned, you can visit us at booth 306. And then if you have specific questions regarding applications, the initial certification exam, or the Continuing Certification Program, I've included contact information for three ABPM staff members. And those would be the individuals most prepared or able to help you with those specific questions. However, if you do send a general email to ABPM, we can definitely ensure that your questions get to the appropriate staff member, so that way they can provide you with assistance. And we'll start on this side of the room. Thank you very much. It was a great presentation. I've had difficulty getting all the information I wanted from the website, mostly because I couldn't believe my good fortune. I expire, not personally, but my certification expires May 31st. I have two comments and a question. Comment one is ACOM maintains a transcript for all of us who, like me, attend AOHC every year. That actually would meet the requirements for our CME annually. And it seems kind of foolish to audit people when you might be able to have a checkbox which allowed ACOM and ABPM to speak to one another, or at least one person at a time, and not just have your computers do that, to give you the CME information as it's achieved. The second question, or second comment, I don't remember. I do remember my question. I'm involved in a multi-state licensure project currently. I have a lot of pending applications for state medical licenses. Right now, if I download a certificate, it says that my certificate expires May 31st. I know it will happen by the end of the year, but in my time sensitive situation, when can I get a certificate that extends that out to 2029? Yeah, I apologize that I didn't provide more context on this. I think when we say at the end of the year, that is going to be typically for our diplomats who fall in the largest cohort of recertifications, which is January 31st of the following year. For those individuals with certificates that I would call a unique expiration date, meaning that you do not fall into that large group of recertifications, your board certification will be extended before the current expiration. If you actually have a chance during this meeting to come by the booth, I can update your certificate expiration today. If you can just stop by the booth at some point today or tomorrow, I can take care of that for you. Great. I will, and not to monopolize, but I'd just like to make my comment that I've managed to remember. The to be determined improvement in practice activity, sorry, not using your term of art, but it seems to me that as a community of people in this profession who are recertifying, it might be useful for us to have the ability to talk amongst ourselves on the ABPM site about things that we're doing. I know that it would be interesting to see what other people have chosen to do, and I think it would be beneficial to all of us and to the profession if there could be a little cross-pollination in that way. So I would just encourage ABPM to think about that. No, I think that's great feedback. And again, with this requirement not being implemented until 2030, we have plenty of time to really work with our diplomate population to make those necessary changes. I will say with 100% certainty that before we implement any future requirements, we're going to have multiple continuing certification surveys where we reach out to our diplomate population, not only to know, do you like the current program we're launching? Is there anything that can be changed about the current program? But then also looking forward, what can we do to make sure improvement in health and healthcare is valuable to you? So I think that's going to be really great feedback to provide on those surveys, so that way we can take it to the board and say, here is what diplomates are looking for, and what can we do to ensure that the program brings that value? So I appreciate that feedback, and I actually do see we have some board members in the audience, so they heard it too. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Yes? Yes, thanks for a great presentation. Thank you. So I'm in his situation. Mine's going to expire before the next cohort in January. Are we going to be able to get a written certificate with our updated date? So that is something we are still in discussion. You will be able to receive that written verification of certification letter. When it comes to a new certificate to hang on the wall, I think definitely reach out to ABPM. We're still determining how to best handle certificate orders, since we are going to be extending such a large group of diplomates at the same time. So I do think we're going to have more information about what that process looks like in the coming weeks or months. But in the meantime, again, I would recommend stopping by the booth today. I will update your certificate expiration date. We can get you that written verification in the interim, so that way you do have confirmation of board certification for your employers. And then we can kind of go from there when it comes to that new certificate. Yeah. And then the other question I have is the improvement of health care practice, whatever. Will that, if you're boarded in several specialties, will one count for the other? It will cross? So that's also a great question. In the former maintenance of certification program, we did have opportunities for reciprocity. So the requirement for the former MOC program was two activities every 10 years. One had to be through an ABPM partner specialty society, and the other one could be reciprocal credit for an activity you've completed with another ABMS member board. I anticipate that we probably will have some form of reciprocity moving forward. However, that specific requirement has yet to be determined. So I would say more information on whether or not, you know, if we're looking at phase three, a 10-year cycle, one activity every five years, I do think there could be an opportunity to have one of those be fulfilled through completion of activity with another ABMS member board. But again, that policy just hasn't been created yet. So more information. But if your specialties are all in preventive medicine? Oh, my apologies. Yeah. So you don't need to duplicate efforts. If you have multiple ABPM board certifications, the information you saw today is going to be consistent for all of your boards. So you do not need to complete, for instance, you have OEM and PHGPM certification. You do not need to do 40 hours every year. You just need to do 20. Similar with the improvement in health and healthcare, you will not need to complete one activity for both certificates. The completion of one activity will fulfill the requirement for both certifications. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Good morning. Thank you for this presentation. It's super helpful. My pleasure. I know that in preventive medicine, there is a bit like lifestyle medicine and preventive medicine have our, I guess, working hand in hand. If, for example, myself, we were saying I am board certified in occupational environmental medicine, as well as preventive medicine, with a leaning more towards lifestyle medicine. I guess I could ask you this separately, but I think that there's a lot of other people who are doing lifestyle, I mean, who are doing preventive medicine with more of the partnership with lifestyle medicine. Would that be, because now there's also a lifestyle medicine board certification, which I'm not sure if it's independent or if it's part of ABPM. So can you provide a little bit of insights on people who do lifestyle medicine within the preventive medicine umbrella, if you will? Yeah, sure. So there is certification in lifestyle medicine. I believe it's under the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine. So they are a separate organization offering their own credential. I do know that we have a lot of diplomates certified in public health and general preventive medicine that are similar to you, working more closely in lifestyle medicine. At this point in time, you know, lifestyle medicine is not a certification by the ABPM. I can't speak to the future, what that might look like, if there would be some sort of partnership at a later date. That's really going to be up to the two organizations to work together and determine if that's something that would be appropriate in a future date. But in regards to your board certification, if you're certified by American Board of Lifestyle Medicine, you're participating in their program. They're not an ABMS member board, but I am certain that you're earning CME credits as part of that maintenance of certification. If those credits are AMA, PRA, Category 1 CME credits or equivalent, then those can still be applied to your ABPM certification. By saying that you need to complete specialty-specific credits, that does not necessarily mean you need to complete those credits with the partner specialty society. So if you are earning credits in lifestyle medicine, they don't have to be through the American College of Preventive Medicine. They just need to be relevant to a content area within that specialty. Lifestyle medicine, as you know, is pretty important when it comes to preventive medicine and public health in general preventive medicine. So those credits would count towards your CME credit requirement. That's what I want. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. My pleasure. All right. Again, we have any... Well, let's see at the time. We still have about 10 minutes left in this session. So if there are any additional questions, please feel free to ask them. Again, we are available to answer any personal types of questions you have regarding your specific certification at booth 306. And I believe, do we have any online questions? Okay. So one of the questions we received online is, can we expect that a majority of LAP questions will be derived from specific sources, such as the ACOM Journal of Achmed, or any specific references? I ask because a few years ago, the Family Medicine LAP often asked questions that were derived from specific American Family Physician Journal articles. I would say right now, the ABPM is not using a select set of references for longitudinal assessment. We actually just initiated the item writing process for longitudinal assessment this year. And the first meeting of those subcommittees will take place this summer to review items that were created this year. I think when it comes to preparation materials for longitudinal assessment, that is still something being discussed at the board, as well as with the partner specialty societies. So right now, I can't speak to what the specific references are going to look like. But I will say that before we launch longitudinal assessment in 2025, we will be providing more guidance on what the content areas assessed are going to include. And then any recommendations we may have for preparing for the assessment. One thing I would note, again, is that this isn't meant to be a former maintenance certification exam. It's not meant to be an initial certification exam. These are meant to be walking around knowledge that would be common for someone who is working within that specialty or subspecialty. So while I can't say whether or not we would have a specific list of references that we would recommend reviewing before you initiate the assessment, I will say that we will be communicating more information about the types of questions we'll be administering before the program launches in 2025. All right. And on that note, it is 9.06. So we almost made it the full hour. But I am happy to give you back nine minutes this morning to grab a coffee or take a quick break before your next session. Thank you so much for attending today's session on continuing certification.

ABPM certification process

American Board of Preventive Medicine

initial certification

continuing certification program

physician portal

maintaining board certification

lifelong professional development requirement

longitudinal assessment program

requirements clarification