The proposal by the major cardiovascular societies in the US to form a new board of cardiovascular medicine to manage initial and ongoing certification of cardiologists represents something of a revolution in the field of continuing medical education and assessment of competency.
Five US cardiovascular societies — the American College of Cardiology (ACC), the American Heart Association (AHA), the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA), the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS), and the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) — have now joined forces to propose a new professional certification board for cardiovascular medicine, to be known as the American Board of Cardiovascular Medicine (ABCVM).
The ABCVM would be independent of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), the current organization providing maintenance of certification for cardiologists as well as many other internal medicine subspecialties. The ABIM’s maintenance of certification process has been widely criticized for many years and has been described as “needlessly burdensome and expensive.”
, according to Jeffrey Kuvin, MD, a trustee of the ACC, who has been heading up the working group to develop this plan.
Dr. Kuvin, who is chair of the cardiology at Northwell Health, Manhasset, New York, a large academic healthcare system, explained that maintenance of certification has been a topic of discussion across the cardiovascular community for many years, and the ACC has a working group focused on the next steps for evaluation of competency, which he chairs.
“The topic of evaluation of competence has been on the mind of the ACC for many years and hence a work group was developed to focus on this,” Dr. Kuvin noted. “A lot of evolution of the concepts and next steps have been drawn out of this working group. And now other cardiovascular societies have joined to show unification across the house of cardiology and that this is indeed the way that the cardiovascular profession should move.”
“Time to Separate from Internal Medicine”
The general concept behind the new cardiology board is to separate cardiology from the ABIM.
“This is rooted from the concept that cardiology has evolved so much over the last few decades into such a large multidimensional specialty that it really does demarcate itself from internal medicine, and as such, it deserves a separate board governed by cardiologists with collaboration across the entirely of cardiology,” Dr. Kuvin said.
Cardiology has had significant growth and expansion of technology, tools, medications, and the approach to patients in many specialities and subspecialties, he added. “We have defined training programs in many different areas within cardiology; we have our own guidelines, our own competency statements, and in many cases, cardiology exists as its own department outside of medicine in many institutions. It’s just time to separate cardiology from the umbrella of internal medicine.”
The new cardiology board would be separate from, and not report to, the ABIM; rather, it would report directly to the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), the only recognized medical certification body in the US.