ABPS talks to HCPro

There’s been some heated debate about the newly announced American Board of Hospital Medicine (ABHM) that offers board certification. The American Board of Physician Specialties (ABPS), under the umbrella of the American Association of Physician Specialists, Inc. (AAPS), announced the ABHM in January as the first available to hospitalists. Just take a look at the blog comments, and you can see why the new ABHM is ruffling some feathers. It seems that the ABPS beat the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) to the finish line before the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) released details about its impeding, yet-to-be-named board certification for hospital medicine.

In a statement to HCPro, the ABPS released some interesting keypoints about its organization and certification standards:

• The American Board of Physician Specialties (ABPS) is the third largest nationally recognized physician multispecialty certifying body in the United States, providing board certification to both allopathic (M.D.) and osteopathic (D.O.) physicians
• ABPS was established in 1950 and is in its 59th year
• It has 3,800 members
• The ABPS has Diplomates in all of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Canada
• All of the written and oral examinations are consistent with testing standards of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the American Psychological Association (APA)
• The ABPS is the only nationally recognized physician multispecialty certifying body that has public members on its boards of certification

The new ABHM joins 15 other certifying boards that ABPS currently offers, including disaster medicine, the only one in U.S., according to the ABPS statement.

The statement goes on to say, “The ABPS, although established by the AAPS, is an independent, standard setting, multispecialty physician certifying organization. This is identical as to how the American Board of Medical Specialties’ (ABMS) boards were originally established by the American Medical Association.”

We love hearing from readers and especially from the organizations themselves to give readers the most accurate and up-to-date information. Comment below or email us at kcheung[at]hcpro.com or ejones[at]hcpro.com.

Liz Jones contributed to this post. Keep a look out for Liz’s upcoming story in the April issue of Hospitalist Leadership Advisor, an supplement to the Medical Staff Briefing newsletter and her blog posts on HospitalistLeadership.com.