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From the Editor
 Maintenance of Certification - A Team Approach
by Lane F. Donnelly, MD, ABR Trustee
2014;7[3]:53-54
Initial board certification and Maintenance of Certification (MOC) have historically been and primarily still are dependent on individual performance-based assessments. The American Board of Radiology has recently introduced MOC Team Tracker and the Whole Practice MOC Discount Pilot Program. As mentioned in the last From the Editor [1], MOC Team Tracker is one of many initiatives that the ABR has created to help make participation within MOC meaningful, easy, and aligned with improving current radiology practice. MOC Team Tracker is designed to allow participating diplomates to delegate the "bookkeeping" side of MOC to individuals within their practices.
The ABR also hopes that MOC Team Tracker will help facilitate a team approach to MOC Part 4: Practice Quality Improvement (PQI). A group approach to PQI can promote standardization of practice--or creation of standard work--to promote high-reliability systems that can contribute to improved quality, safety, and efficiency [4-6]. Read more.
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Ask the Director
What Does "Board Eligible" Mean Today?
by Valerie P. Jackson, MD, Executive Director
2014;7[3]:55
Until very recently, almost all diagnostic radiologists passed their ABR certification examinations prior to graduating from residency. Thus, for many years, the only radiologists who used the "board-eligible" status were those who were off cycle for some reason or those who had difficulties in passing the exams. The term often had a negative connotation in our specialty. The change in timing of the ABR diagnostic radiology (DR) examinations, with the Certifying Exam taking place 15 months after the completion of residency training, has led to confusion. All graduating residents and fellows are now "board eligible," but some practices are reluctant to hire these new radiologists because they are not yet board certified. They are concerned about the stigma of the term "board eligible" and uncertain whether these individuals will successfully become certified. Read more.
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Focus on Maintenance of Certification
Congratulations and Reminders
by Vincent P. Mathews, MD, ABR Trustee
First of all, congratulations to all the ABR diplomates who completed their Maintenance of Certification (MOC) requirements early and will receive new certificates this year! Close to 900 diplomates finished their requirements by September 15, 2014, and will have their certificates in hand by the end of the year.
Those who passed the MOC Exam in October 2014 and/or completed their requirements after September 15 will receive their new certificates early in 2015. Remember that under Continuous Certification, ABR certificates no longer have "valid-through" dates. Instead, on each new certificate, the date of initial certification is noted, accompanied by the statement that "ongoing validity of this certificate is contingent upon meeting the requirements of Maintenance of Certification." Read more.
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Focus on Residents
The Certifying Exam: What to Expect
by Dennis M. Balfe, MD, ABR Trustee
 In October 2015, the American Board of Radiology will administer its first electronic Certifying Examination, offered to candidates who have passed the Core Examination. This short communication is intended to give candidates a brief review of the philosophy underlying the exam, as well as some of the nuts and bolts of the test administration.
Components of the Certifying Examination
The Certifying Examination has three distinct components, each of which will be considered in some depth in the description that follows. They consist of (1) Noninterpretive Skills, (2) Essentials of Diagnostic Radiology, and (3) Clinical Practice Areas. Read more.
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Focus on Interventional/Diagnostic Radiology
Update on the IR/DR Certificate
by Kay H. Vydareny, MD, Associate Executive Director for Diagnostic Radiology and Acting Associate Executive Director for Interventional Radiology
2014;7[3]:61-62
The program requirements for the Interventional Radiology Residency  Program were approved by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in September 2014. These requirements can be seen on the ACGME website. The requirements describe two types of program pathways: an integrated program and a two-year independent program.
A candidate would match from medical school into an integrated program. After completion of an ACGME-accredited clinical year, an IR resident would complete a five-year training program, including three years of training in diagnostic radiology (DR) and two years of training in interventional radiology (IR). Read more.
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Focus on Radiation Oncology
Testing of Non-Clinical Skills (NCS)
by Paul E. Wallner, DO, Associate Executive Director for Radiation Onoclogy; and ABR Trustees Dennis C. Shrieve, MD, PhD, and Anthony L. Zietman, MD
2014;7[3]63-64
 | | From left: Drs. Wallner, Shrieve, and Zietman |
Over the past decade, interest and public discourse in healthcare system delivery, training, and testing, as well as a desire for a higher- quality, safer, more patient-centric and transparent experience, have significantly increased. To address some of these concerns, a variety of stakeholders have called for an increased emphasis on certain elements of practice not considered to be traditional clinical skills in undergraduate and postgraduate training programs and at all levels of proficiency and knowledge testing. In recognition of the changing requirements of the knowledge and skill sets critical to the modern practice of medicine, the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) and its Member Boards determined that testing limited to clinical items and case material alone, within initial certification (IC) and Maintenance of Certification (MOC) programs, was insufficient to address these needs. Read more.
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Focus on Medical Physics
ABR News of Interest for Medical Physicists
by ABR Medical Physics Trustees Jerry D. Allison, PhD; Geoffrey S. Ibbott, PhD; and J. Anthony Seibert, PhD
2014;7[3]:65-69
 | | From left: Drs. Seibert, Allison, and Ibbott |
This article contains updates on the following three topics: - Initial Certification: The medical physics oral examination
(Part 3) - Maintenance of Certification: Upcoming look-backs
- ABR Exam statistics
Initial Certification: Updates on the ABR Medical Physics Oral Examination (Part 3) The intent of the oral examination is to test knowledge and fitness to practice applied clinical medical physics in the specified area of expertise. This is achieved by evaluation of the candidates in five physics categories by five examiners, each of whom asks one question from each of the five categories. Each exam period is 30 minutes, with several minutes allowed between examiners. Thus, the exam is 2½ hours in duration. Read more.
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ABR Wins Workplace Award
2014;7[3]:70
 | | ABR Executive Director Valerie Jackson, MD (center) holds the award, with staff (from left) Eric Rowland, Kristin Hemsworth, Karyn Howard, Nick LaPrell, Lydia Malis, and Blake Wescott |
In August 2014, the ABR was nominated for a workplace innovation award, and in October we were notified that out of 500 applicants we had progressed to the finalist round. On November 13, the Society of Human Resources - Greater Tucson announced that the ABR had won the Innovation in the Workplace Award for Technology/ Process Improvement for companies of 80 or fewer employees. Eleven judges with a variety of experience in leadership roles reviewed the nominations and chose the winner.
The Innovation in the Workplace Awards honor the region's outstanding human resources (HR) professionals, companies, and teams. The Technology/Process Improvement Award is given for development and implementation of a process, system, or tool that enhances employee processes or changes organizational culture, creates a process or implements a system that improves employee participation in a program, increases employee knowledge, realizes a cost savings, or enhances an HR activity by the implementation of a system or process that resulted in measurable change.
Our application highlighted the new processes that we have been implementing over the last year, which we have recently named "Idea Engine." The goal of Idea Engine is to improve our productivity and accuracy in the workplace through small changes, sprints (two-week IT goals), idea development, business requirements, and continuous process improvement.
Congratulations to all the ABR staff for this accomplishment and their hard work!
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Important Notice
The ABR has recently heard from several diplomates who received a letter from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regarding a 1.5% penalty that will be imposed in 2015. Please note that this penalty will be assessed based only on lack of prior CMS PQRS participation, a non-ABR program. The penalty is NOT related to ABR MOC:PQRS participation, a separate voluntary program that confers only an extra incentive payment with no penalties for non-participation. If you have received such a notice, please contact CMS. Thank you!
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Board Eligibility Expiration Takes Effect December 31
2014;7[3]:71-72
Per the ABR Board Eligibility Policy, adopted in 2011, those seeking certification in diagnostic radiology or radiation oncology who completed their training in 2004 or prior will cease being "board eligible" after December 31, 2014, and can no longer describe themselves as board eligible. The ABR will report that a candidate is not board eligible in response to a request for information. The initial termination of board eligibility for medical physics candidates will take effect December 31, 2016. Each discipline has specific requirements for reinstatement of board eligibility.
Diagnostic radiology (DR) and radiation oncology (RO) candidates must take one additional year of training in a department with an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited or Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC)-accredited residency program. The ABR must approve the additional year before it begins, and the training must occur after expiration of board eligibility status. During this period, a candidate's status would be "not certified, not board eligible." At the end of that year, the department chair or program director must attest to satisfactory completion of the experience. After this documentation has been provided to the ABR, the candidate would be able to re-enter the certification process. Read more.
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Dr. Gary Becker Awarded RSNA Gold Medal
2014;7[3]:73
Congratulations to Gary J. Becker, MD, who was presented with the Radiological Society of North America's (RSNA's) gold medal on December 2, 2014, at the RSNA's 100th Annual Meeting in Chicago. Dr. Becker served as ABR executive director from 2007 until his retirement in mid-2014 and was RSNA president in 2009. To read more about Dr. Becker and the two other RSNA gold medal winners, see the
article on the RSNA website.
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Volunteer Spotlight
2014;7[3]:74-76
 
Today we shine our Volunteer Spotlight on two individuals: Michael V. Yester, PhD, a medical physicist for the University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical Center, and M. Victoria (Vicki) Marx, MD, a vascular and interventional radiologist at USC Medical Center in Los Angeles.
We first interviewed Dr. Marx, a longtime ABR volunteer who received a Lifetime Service Award from us in 2012. Dr. Marx began volunteering as a vascular and interventional radiology (VIR) examiner for the Oral Board Exam. She currently leads, in her own words, "a great team of people writing VIR items for the Core Exam," as chair of the Core Committee. Read more.
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Imaging Study Fosters Correct Patient Identification
2014;7[3]:77
Michael G. Evanoff, PhD, the ABR's director of digital imaging, recently co-authored* a paper entitled "A Multiobserver Study of the Effects of Including Point-of-care Patient Photographs with Portable Radiology." The paper was published in the August 2014 issue of Academic Radiology. The study evaluated whether the presence of facial photographs obtained at the point-of-care of portable radiography leads to increased detection of wrong-patient errors.
In this institutional review board-approved study, wherein 90 radiologists each interpreted a unique randomly chosen set of 10 radiographic pairs containing up to 10 percent mismatches, it was concluded that facial photographs obtained simultaneously with portable chest radiographs indeed increased the identification of any wrong-patient errors without a substantial increase in interpretation time. The technique offers a potential means to increase patient safety through correct patient identification.
The published study also was featured as a "paper of the month" by the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation. To read it in its entirety, click here.
*Other co-authors include Srini Tridandapani, PhD, MD; Senthil Ramamurthy, MSEE; James Provenzale, MD; Nancy A. Obuchowski, PhD; and Pamela Bhatti, PhD.
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Thank you . . .
for reading this issue of The BEAM. If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, please email abr@theabr.org.
Valerie P. Jackson, MD, Executive Director,
American Board of Radiology
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