Category Archives: SCAI

Who’s Sorry Now? The ABIM, That’s Who

sorry_140sqThe lyrics of the 1923 song go like this: “Who’s sorry now, who’s sorry now? / Whose heart is achin’ for breakin’ each vow?”

And today, it was the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) who said they were sorry for breaking the hearts of all the cardiologists in the U.S. of A.

They wrote specifically: “We got it wrong and sincerely apologize. We are sorry.Continue reading

1 Comment

Filed under ACC, Media Coverage, Medical Education, SCAI

Scalpel…Suture…Suction…Pencil?

  The buzz going around the medical community this week is Dr. Paul Teirstein’s article in today’s New England Journal of Medicine, titled “Boarded to Death — Why Maintenance of Certification Is Bad for Doctors and Patients,” in which he skewers the imposition of the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) requirement put into place a year ago by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM).

The concept of the MOC was to ensure that physicians who had been certified in their specialty kept current with medical practice and the current guidelines. It’s not that concept that Dr. Teirstein objects to, but its heavy-handed implementation by, as he puts it, “people not directly involved in patient care who have lost contact with the realities of day-to-day clinical practice.” Ouch!

And Dr. Teirstein is not alone in his objections. An online petition he created has garnered almost 20,000 signatures. It asks the ABIM to recall the changes in MOC and institute a simple pathway consisting of  a recertification test every ten years; a corollary petition, pledging non-compliance (read “boycott”) has over 6,000 signers – a more difficult pledge since many physicians are employed by hospital systems that require the ABIM MOC. And this certification is a monopoly, but more on that later…. Continue reading

Leave a Comment

Filed under ACC, Medical Education, Meetings & Conferences, SCAI, Web Site

Will a Denial of Service DOS Attack Hit New York State Medicaid Patients? Or Perhaps Your State?

  What does a Denial of Service Attack have to do with stents, angioplasty and PCI?

In the world of computing, a DOS attack is defined as “an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users.” Typically netbots programmed by hackers overwhelm the web servers of banks, credit card providers, etc. whose sites then become unavailable to their customers. Now it seems similarly that in New York State, cardiovascular treatments may become unavailable to some Medicaid patients: a denial of service. Continue reading

1 Comment

Filed under ACC, Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC), Cost Effectiveness, Health Insurance, Interviews, Media Coverage, SCAI