January 26, 2012
ABFM Update Regarding ‘Board Eligibility’
The following is a message from the American Board of Family Medicine regarding Board Eligibility:
The term ‘board eligible’ has never been recognized by member boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), including the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), but the term continues to be used by credentialing organizations and others to recognize non-certified physicians as having equivalent status. In practice, no limit exists on how long a non-certified physician could remain board eligible. The abuse of the board eligible term and status perpetuated the ability of poorly qualified physicians to practice outside of their initial certification with a risk to patients and resulted in a lack of relationship between the initial certifying examination and training as a concurrent/synergistic measure of physician competency.
In an effort to resolve this confusion for the credentialers and the patients, all member boards of the ABMS agreed to establish parameters under which non-certified physicians could actually be recognized as being board eligible and to further define the time limit for such board eligible status.
The ABFM Board of Directors decided at its meeting in October, 2011 that it would define board eligibility as the first seven years after loss of certification or the completion of an ACGME accredited residency training program. Therefore, beginning January 1, 2012, a physician will have seven years in which to successfully complete his or her initial certification examination after completing training or, if previously certified, will have seven years after the loss of certification to successfully complete the examination.
During this seven-year period, these board eligible physicians will have to continue to meet the ongoing requirements to sit for the examination and must maintain a full, valid, and unrestricted license. After this seven-year period, the physician will lose the ability to refer to himself or herself as board eligible and will need to re-enter training and complete at least one year of additional training in an ACGME accredited family medicine residency before he or she will be allowed to reapply to sit for the examination. This rule will be effective January 1, 2012, and as further details of the program are developed they will be published.
For questions regarding the board eligibility, Diplomates may contact the Support Center at 877-223-7437 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).