There is currently a brouhaha over Rand Paul’s lack of board certification as an ophthalmologist:
Jack Conway’s campaign has attacked RP on this issue:
But if the article is accurate, the basis of the dispute was the inclusion of a grandfather clause for older ophthalmologists that exempted them from recertification requirements. So, IOW, Rand Paul merely wanted a professional society for eye doctors with more stringent membership criteria. It’s simply dishonest and retarded to parlay this into an accusation of a character flaw on RP’s part.
And I say this as a progressive who thinks Paul is a nut job and whose opinion of teabaggers is lower than Shakira’s waistline.
Rand Paul has claimed that he was certified by both his own organization and the national organization, American Board of Ophthalmology, which is associated with the American Medical Association. In fact, he let his national certification lapse after starting his own organization.
Nonetheless, a few weeks ago, Paul was still falsely claiming to hold certification from the national organization.
Paul’s campaign released a statement claiming that it was formed in 1987 with 200 member ophthalmologists working for re-certification. In fact, Paul’s organization wasn’t incorporated until twelve years later, in 1999. Then he let the paperwork lapse and didn’t restart it up until 2005. (Which coincidentally, is the same year he let is national certification lapse.)
The standards for certification via Paul’s organization are unpublished. Paul’s organization doesn’t maintain a website. Paul’s wife, who is listed as the vice president of the organization, couldn’t answer questions about what the standards are. By contrast, the standards for recertification for the national American Board of Opthamology, are available on their website: Home | American Board of Ophthalmology
The national American Board of Ophthalmology was founded in 1916. It has certified almost 30,000 opthamologists in that time, with a current total of about 16,000 working today. It is an independant, non-profit organization and it’s board of directors includes 18 members who are themselves opthamologists.
By contrast, Paul’s organization operates out of a PO Box at the UPS store in Bowling Green. The author, Joe Gerth, could find only seven opthamologists who list being certified by Rand Paul. All of them also claim to have official certification as well. None of them were willing to talk to Gerth about Paul’s organization.
I wonder how many of Paul’s patients know that he made up his own certification and refused to renew his official credentials? The hospitals he worked at didn’t know was only certified in his head. They’re review their policies now.
Making up your own medical certification board and then telling yourself that you passed it is just one step above printing out a form off the internet. Maybe it’s some kind of libertarian fantasy but I bet Paul’s patients - and the OP, too - would hate to find out that’s where their doctor’s diplomas came from.
Good for Joe Gerth for reporting the truth about all this, and for the national media for picking it up. If it impact’s Paul’s ability to practice medicine - well it damn well should!
No, it shows what issue that Paul claims he has with the rexisting board, and says almost nothing about the board he created. While it may be that Paul’s board requires re-certification for all, it says nothing at all about what the standards of recertification are. And that information is nowhere to be found, and Paul is not willing to answer questions about it.
His “certification board” has many of the hallmarks of a sham institution, including a PO Box address, family members as officers, and an unwillingness to talk about or provide documentation about the services and requirements for the certification.
This does raise legitimate questions about whether the alternate board is a legitimate organization aimed at promoting high standards in Rand’s specialty (as opposed to a dodge to avoid rigorous recertification exams while looking good for hospital medical staff requirements). He’s going to need to be more candid about this matter, instead of making a silly claim about how it’s an attack on his ability to make a living.
While it’s highly doubtful that this kerfuffle reflects on Rand’s abilities as a physician, it does speak to his honesty and trustworthiness (did he really claim to be certified by both organizations, or was his answer a “misunderstanding”?).
Well, the article just says that Rand Paul says that was the reason, I’m sure that’s accurate in as far as I’m sure that Rand Paul actually said that. But the article doesn’t really make any claim about whether Paul is telling the truth or not, presumably because the sketchiness of the organization makes gathering any independent information on its founding difficult.
So basically, your OP seems to boil down to “Conway should stop criticizing Paul for founding his own medical organization, because Paul says he had a good reason”.
The actual story is pretty bizarre. Can you really form your own medical organization, have them certify you and then still be allowed to practice? I thought state laws usually required medical professionals to have some sort of certification from some sort of recognized medical authority, not your own fly-by-night organization run out of a Post Box by your wife. Does Kentucky have some weird loop-hole or something that made this possible.
I’d certainly like to see some documentation from 1997 indicating that this was the motivation of the group, before accepting this statement at face value. Did they send a letter to the ABO expressing their discontent with this double standard, and saying they’d be starting up their own board if the ABO didn’t see the error of its ways? Did they take out an ad in, or give an interview to, a trade magazine announcing the founding of the organization, and giving their reasons?
And even if this claim is true, the absence of any documentation concerning the NBO’s recertification standards makes it ring hollow anyway.
You don’t have to be “board certified” to be a doctor, or even a specialist. Merneith’s link in post #4 covers some of these issues. Paul may be in some trouble with one of the hospitals where he has privileges, though. It’s not commenting on the requirements for a specialist to have privileges, which suggests they may be hastily rewriting them. The other hospital is on record as saying you must be board certified to get privileges, but there is no requirement to remain board certified to retain the privileges. Paul seems to fit that bill.
Except that Page One Kentucky has been on it since April. It’s hard to believe that it’s taken this long for the mainstream sources to catch on; P1K is hardly obscure.
I don’t think there’s anything more to this than what’s on the surface, but that’s plenty. “Board-certified” doesn’t mean anything when you can just make up your own board, especially if you don’t make your standards public.
It seems equally likely to me that this group decided that if the old docs didn’t need to recertify, then the young docs didn’t either. Eliminating recertification for all doctors is a faster and cheaper way to remove such a double standard.
In fact, I will bet 10 bucks that this turns out to be the case. Paul’s organization will have nothing more rigorous than writing a check for recertification – no tests and no CME credit requirements.
There have to be other institutions involved to make such an accreditation institution. My last employer was a hospital, and like all hospitals, it had an office dedicated to assisting medical staff maintain and document their credentials. They are the folks who proctor exams, design and offer courses that count as Continuing Medical Education, and record the doctor’s attendance/participation. I talked to doctors nearly every week who were looking for such courses, especially doctors from private practices. And the hospitals accommodate outside doctors (without privileges) as a courtesy to assist them in keeping their certifications.
It ought to be pretty easy to tell if this organization is a sham or not. If it is not integrated into the teaching programs in a bunch of teaching hospitals, it is a sham.
In fact, there are now about 180 such non-ABMS boards in existence. The standards for certification by these Boards are highly variable, and they may or may not represent to the public that the diplomates of that Board are properly trained or that their diplomates are truly engaged in a new specialty. In some instances, these boards are designed to represent alternative pathways to certification by a Board for those individuals who have not been able to become certified by an ABMS Board. They may also function to provide an aura of legitimacy to a specialty that has not yet been recognized as an accepted medical specialty, and thereby provide an element of competitive advantage or differentiation to its diplomates. These Boards are self-designated, and not subject to the standards and peer review mechanisms of the ABMS Boards."
The most common scenario for establishment of non-ABMS boards seems to be in the cases of new/evolving specialties (i.e. urgent care, critical care, hand surgery etc).
I’m not sure how many of these competing boards are set up and run by members of a family, as apparently is the case with Rand Paul’s opthalmology board - and how many are based on protest movements with no intent of later joining the ABMS or merging with an existing ABMS medical board for that specialty.
Ah, fair enough. Reading Merneith’s link, I obviously was under the wrong impression of what these boards were supposed to do. Still bizarre though, I guess we’ll have to wait and see if the press can dig up someone whose a member of Paul’s board and willing to give a statement.
This seems the most likely. Still, even if he doesn’t require recertification, you think there’d be some test needed to join in the first place.
Kinda reminds me of the “certified” psychics you see on late night TV. I picture a couple of them getting together and saying, “I’ll certify you if you certify me.”
I’m glad that I have time to withdraw my bet before anyone takes it.
According to Paul’s statement to the Washington Post, all of his opthamologists must periodically recertify.
And according to **Really Not All The Bright’s ** link in post #16, the person writing the editorial claims that the new body does in fact have some kind of test, so it is not an empty shell.
I’m still going with “sham”. In addition to Paul and his wife, the NBO has one other officer, Hilton Ashby - Paul’s father-in-law. Hilton Ashby is not a licensed medical provider, as far as I can tell.
