Sources: American Academy of Family Physicians and American Board of Family Medicine
With the end of 2019 just around the corner, remember to review your stage requirements for your American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) Family Medicine Certification to make sure you have met all of your activity requirements.
For those looking for a performance improvement (PI) activity, there are roughly 57 activities available in your physician portfolio to complete this – including a few new topics added this year! Please note: the Hand Hygiene PPM with simulated patient data and the Think Culturally Health’s Cultural Competence activities are no longer available.
What Can You Do to fulfill the PI Requirement?
Start by using the new PI Activity Locator accessible in your physician portfolio. Through answering a short list of questions about your practice type, activities, and interests, the PI Locator presents you with a curated list of PI activities that are most relevant to your needs. The PI Locator will then select the most relevant activities based on the preferences set and present you with custom-selected activities which are then saved and ready for review. It also allows you to save your personal preferences and to bookmark activities of interest for ease of future reference. Plus, it takes less than 5 minutes to do and will save you time searching through a long list of potential options – making the selection process easier!
If you are already engaged in PI activities in your practice – regardless of practice type – there is an option for that too – the ABFM Self-Directed Performance Improvement Activity, Clinical.
What is the ABFM Self-Directed Performance Improvement Activity, Clinical?
The ABFM recognizes it is common for family physicians to be engaged in performance improvement in practice, and, when that is the case, the goal of the PI requirement is already being met. The ABFM also appreciates that more options were needed for physicians whose practice scope and environment is different (hospital-based, urgent or emergent care settings, locum tenens, hospice/palliative care, sports medicine, etc.). The self-directed activity may be the best option for these physicians to report on what they have done. It also allows them the ability to come up with a quality improvement (QI) effort that is meaningful to their current scope of practice.
If you are reporting on QI activities that have already completed, the application process can be completed in about 10 minutes, if you have all of the information and data available. If you are starting a new activity, you will need to identify an area of improvement, collect pre-improvement data, implement an intervention to address it, and gather post- improvement data. In many cases this can be done in a short time frame – even within two weeks from the start. Once submitted it can take up to 10 business days for the activity to be reviewed.
For a review of what steps are included and what information/data is needed for this activity option, view this helpful handout.
Another great aspect of this activity is that if the physician works amongst a group of 10 or less family physicians, the activity can be counted towards each individual’s certification requirements using the group ID that is provided – only one application needs to be submitted by one physician to start that process.
Have Questions about these Activities?
The ABFM is hosting live, virtual office hours through Thursday, December 19. Ann Williamson, ABFM performance improvement manager, will be available on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:30- 4:00 p.m. EST during this period. You may join by dialing 866.899.4679 with the access code: 314-208-213. You can also reach out directly to the ABFM Support Center by calling 877.223.7437 anytime, or by utilizing the live chat function on the ABFM website.