Source: American Board of Family Medicine
The American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) thanks all family physicians for their exceptional commitment to caring for their patients and their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ABFM recognizes that these are truly unprecedented times and wants to do everything it can to allow you to focus on what is most important: your patients and your families. The ABFM’s commitment is that no family physician will lose their ABFM certification because of the extraordinary patient care pressures associated with this pandemic.
Family physicians across the country are learning rapidly about COVID-19, applying what they learned to their practice setting, and adapting their approach to provide better care for patients at an unprecedented rate. The ABFM will recognize you for these contributions in its continuing certification program. Additionally, if you are unable to participate in certification activities or Family Medicine Certification Longitudinal Assessment (FMCLA) in 2020 because of the demands of this pandemic, it will not jeopardize your certificate or your ability to continue your certification.
- All Diplomates with a three-year stage ending in 2020 will have a one-year extension on completing all stage requirements.
- For Diplomates participating in FMCLA, the Quarter 1 deadline has already been extended through Monday, June 15, 2020; we anticipate extending completion guidelines further for subsequent quarters. For first year participants, we will adjust the meaningful participation guidelines.
- Any Diplomate in Year 10 of their certification cycle who opted for the one-day examination will have an additional year to meet their examination requirement.
- Any board-eligible family physician with an eligibility end date in 2020, or anyone participating in the re-entry process with an end date in 2020, will have an additional year to obtain their certification.
- Any Diplomate who also holds a Certificate of Added Qualification with an examination deadline in 2020 will have the option for an additional year to complete the examination requirement.
- For those facing financial hardship as the result of the pandemic, we will establish a method for delaying 2020 payments. This will take a short time to be implemented online, but once available, Diplomates will find information about this in their Physician Portfolio.
These extensions do not prevent anyone with a 2020 deadline from staying on the current timeline. Certification activities will be accessible for anyone who wants to use them. The ABFM is continuing its efforts to improve current Knowledge Self-Assessments (KSA) and will begin to support learning on COVID-19 as evidence becomes more available. Specifically related to the Performance Improvement (PI) requirement, the ABFM will be providing a mechanism to meet the PI requirement by telling us about the unprecedented and rapid changes that you had to make in the ways that you deliver care, regardless of practice type or scope.
Further details will be communicated to those directly involved in the items listed above over the coming weeks. The ABFM is working out many operational details. It will take up to a month to reflect these changes in your Physician Portfolio. You can access updated information on the ABFM website. The ABFM is also committed to ongoing review of what is happening as the pandemic evolves and will adjust as necessary going forward.
The ABFM supports you in the weeks and months ahead as you do the critical and challenging work required of this profession. It is nothing less than heroic.