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Like so many things in HM, the story of how hospitalists first learned about the focused practice program is a modern one.
It started with a text message, which led to a blog post, which reached thousands of readers, many of them hospitalists interested in how to bolster their bona fides in a specialty known for its explosive growth in recent years.
Now, hospitalists certified in internal medicine have the opportunity to reinforce their commitment to the specialty by maintaining their certification through the Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine pathway offered by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). The Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine (FPHM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program enables hospitalists to distinguish their practice within the larger specialty of internal medicine.
The Evolution of FPHM
The new pathway has been years in the making, and it reflects the growing influence of HM in healthcare, according to ABIM Chief Medical Officer Eric Holmboe, MD. He sees the FPHM as the result of a combination of factors, including the fact that the specialty now has more than 30,000 hospitalists practicing nationwide. “If you look at the past years, this has been a viable and vibrant practice,” he says. “If you look at the number of people doing hospital medicine, it’s a factor.”
For Holmboe, it also is a shift in how individuals are recognized based on their practice areas. “This is an acknowledgement by ABIM and the American Board of Medical Specialties to look at Maintenance of Certification in terms of what the individual actually does,” he explains. “Hospitalists play a very important role in the hospital.”
He also credits the leadership of the HM movement—especially pioneers like Robert Wachter, MD, FHM. One of HM’s most ardent champions, Dr. Wachter, chief of the hospital medicine division, professor, and associate chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, worked with ABIM to find a way to recognize hospitalists’ specialized skill sets and their commitment to inpatient medicine. After more than a decade of advocating for a board-certified process to recognize the field, Dr. Wachter, an ABIM board member, began receiving multiple text messages from colleagues announcing that ABIM had approved the focused-practice program. He wrote a post on his blog, Wachter’s World (www.wachtersworld.com), that outlined the need for the FPHM and the significance for aspiring hospitalists.
“In any case, this is an important milestone for the field,” Dr. Wachter wrote in his Sept. 23, 2009, blog entry, “Board Certification for Hospitalists: It’s Heeeere!” “In fact, when I first began speaking to groups of hospitalists nearly 15 years ago, I often showed a slide listing the elements of a true specialty, and one by one we’ve ticked them off,” wrote Dr. Wachter, a former SHM president. “The only unchecked box was recognition of the field as a legitimate ‘specialty,’ as codified by the ABMS board certification process.”
Unchecked, that is, until now.
In early 2011, the medical world will be introduced to the first internists recognized for their focus in HM. For Holmboe, the FPHM is the beginning of an even larger movement.
“The goal is continued interest: getting people involved in quality in their hospital and encouraging people to change behaviors and be recognized by patients and credentialists as valuable,” he says. “That’s the primary mission of ABIM: using certification to improve care.”
Fellow in Hospital Medicine Spotlight
O’Neil Pyke, MD, FHM
Dr. Pyke is a clinical instructor at Commonwealth Medical College and a medical director at the Wyoming Valley Health Care System in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He also serves as a consultant for various hospitalist programs, most actively for his own private consulting company, AMP Hospitalist Consulting, which partners with Salem, N.H.-based physician staffing company Medicus Healthcare Solutions.
Undergraduate Education: Queens College, City University of New York, Flushing, N.Y.
Medical School: Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health, Columbus
Notable: Dr. Pyke was born in Jamaica and moved to New York during high school. He says he owes everything to his parents. His parents, who had no education beyond high school, pushed Dr. Pyke and his siblings to achieve more than they did. His sister is an OB-GYN and his brother is pursuing a medical degree.
FYI: Dr. Pyke enjoys playing golf, cheering for his beloved Ohio State Buckeyes, and spends every Friday night with his wife and two daughters—he even admits to watching “chick flicks” on family night.
For more information about the FHM designation, visit www.hospitalmedicine.org/fellows.
Requirements and Process
Shortly after the program’s approval, ABIM, which administers the FPHM program, went to work in defining the process for the FPHM application and building infrastructure to support the tests. Holmboe expects ABIM will be ready to process pre-applications by April or May. While some details may change, the FPHM application will dovetail with ABIM’s MOC process.
Although hospitalists’ MOC must be current in order to apply for FPHM, hospitalists can begin the FPHM application process at any time. Hospitalists do not need to wait until their next MOC renewal.
Before beginning the application process, hospitalists should ensure that they are eligible. ABIM requires FPHM candidates to have:
- A current or previous ABIM certification in internal medicine;
- A valid, unrestricted medical license and confirmation of good standing in the local practice community;
- ACLS certification; and
- At least three years of hospital medicine practice experience.
Candidates who meet the requirements can then begin the enrollment process by:
- Submitting attestations. Both the hospitalist and a senior officer at the hospital must provide attestations that demonstrate the hospitalist’s experience in HM and his or her commitment to the principles of the specialty.
- Performing a self-assessment. Hospitalists must quantify their experience in HM through an MOC self-assessment. Candidates must achieve at least 100 MOC points. Successful applicants must submit a new self-assessment every three years. The self-assessment can be conducted before or after the exam.
- Taking the MOC examination in Hospital Medicine. Registration for the first HM examination will begin in May. The exam will be conducted in October, and diplomates can take the exam at any time in the process.
Passing the exam and completing the other requirements will earn ABIM diplomats recognition as “Board Certified in Internal Medicine with a Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine.” ABIM will notify successful applicants in late 2010 and ship personalized certificates in early 2011. TH
Brendon Shank is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.
Like so many things in HM, the story of how hospitalists first learned about the focused practice program is a modern one.
It started with a text message, which led to a blog post, which reached thousands of readers, many of them hospitalists interested in how to bolster their bona fides in a specialty known for its explosive growth in recent years.
Now, hospitalists certified in internal medicine have the opportunity to reinforce their commitment to the specialty by maintaining their certification through the Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine pathway offered by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). The Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine (FPHM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program enables hospitalists to distinguish their practice within the larger specialty of internal medicine.
The Evolution of FPHM
The new pathway has been years in the making, and it reflects the growing influence of HM in healthcare, according to ABIM Chief Medical Officer Eric Holmboe, MD. He sees the FPHM as the result of a combination of factors, including the fact that the specialty now has more than 30,000 hospitalists practicing nationwide. “If you look at the past years, this has been a viable and vibrant practice,” he says. “If you look at the number of people doing hospital medicine, it’s a factor.”
For Holmboe, it also is a shift in how individuals are recognized based on their practice areas. “This is an acknowledgement by ABIM and the American Board of Medical Specialties to look at Maintenance of Certification in terms of what the individual actually does,” he explains. “Hospitalists play a very important role in the hospital.”
He also credits the leadership of the HM movement—especially pioneers like Robert Wachter, MD, FHM. One of HM’s most ardent champions, Dr. Wachter, chief of the hospital medicine division, professor, and associate chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, worked with ABIM to find a way to recognize hospitalists’ specialized skill sets and their commitment to inpatient medicine. After more than a decade of advocating for a board-certified process to recognize the field, Dr. Wachter, an ABIM board member, began receiving multiple text messages from colleagues announcing that ABIM had approved the focused-practice program. He wrote a post on his blog, Wachter’s World (www.wachtersworld.com), that outlined the need for the FPHM and the significance for aspiring hospitalists.
“In any case, this is an important milestone for the field,” Dr. Wachter wrote in his Sept. 23, 2009, blog entry, “Board Certification for Hospitalists: It’s Heeeere!” “In fact, when I first began speaking to groups of hospitalists nearly 15 years ago, I often showed a slide listing the elements of a true specialty, and one by one we’ve ticked them off,” wrote Dr. Wachter, a former SHM president. “The only unchecked box was recognition of the field as a legitimate ‘specialty,’ as codified by the ABMS board certification process.”
Unchecked, that is, until now.
In early 2011, the medical world will be introduced to the first internists recognized for their focus in HM. For Holmboe, the FPHM is the beginning of an even larger movement.
“The goal is continued interest: getting people involved in quality in their hospital and encouraging people to change behaviors and be recognized by patients and credentialists as valuable,” he says. “That’s the primary mission of ABIM: using certification to improve care.”
Fellow in Hospital Medicine Spotlight
O’Neil Pyke, MD, FHM
Dr. Pyke is a clinical instructor at Commonwealth Medical College and a medical director at the Wyoming Valley Health Care System in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He also serves as a consultant for various hospitalist programs, most actively for his own private consulting company, AMP Hospitalist Consulting, which partners with Salem, N.H.-based physician staffing company Medicus Healthcare Solutions.
Undergraduate Education: Queens College, City University of New York, Flushing, N.Y.
Medical School: Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health, Columbus
Notable: Dr. Pyke was born in Jamaica and moved to New York during high school. He says he owes everything to his parents. His parents, who had no education beyond high school, pushed Dr. Pyke and his siblings to achieve more than they did. His sister is an OB-GYN and his brother is pursuing a medical degree.
FYI: Dr. Pyke enjoys playing golf, cheering for his beloved Ohio State Buckeyes, and spends every Friday night with his wife and two daughters—he even admits to watching “chick flicks” on family night.
For more information about the FHM designation, visit www.hospitalmedicine.org/fellows.
Requirements and Process
Shortly after the program’s approval, ABIM, which administers the FPHM program, went to work in defining the process for the FPHM application and building infrastructure to support the tests. Holmboe expects ABIM will be ready to process pre-applications by April or May. While some details may change, the FPHM application will dovetail with ABIM’s MOC process.
Although hospitalists’ MOC must be current in order to apply for FPHM, hospitalists can begin the FPHM application process at any time. Hospitalists do not need to wait until their next MOC renewal.
Before beginning the application process, hospitalists should ensure that they are eligible. ABIM requires FPHM candidates to have:
- A current or previous ABIM certification in internal medicine;
- A valid, unrestricted medical license and confirmation of good standing in the local practice community;
- ACLS certification; and
- At least three years of hospital medicine practice experience.
Candidates who meet the requirements can then begin the enrollment process by:
- Submitting attestations. Both the hospitalist and a senior officer at the hospital must provide attestations that demonstrate the hospitalist’s experience in HM and his or her commitment to the principles of the specialty.
- Performing a self-assessment. Hospitalists must quantify their experience in HM through an MOC self-assessment. Candidates must achieve at least 100 MOC points. Successful applicants must submit a new self-assessment every three years. The self-assessment can be conducted before or after the exam.
- Taking the MOC examination in Hospital Medicine. Registration for the first HM examination will begin in May. The exam will be conducted in October, and diplomates can take the exam at any time in the process.
Passing the exam and completing the other requirements will earn ABIM diplomats recognition as “Board Certified in Internal Medicine with a Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine.” ABIM will notify successful applicants in late 2010 and ship personalized certificates in early 2011. TH
Brendon Shank is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.
Like so many things in HM, the story of how hospitalists first learned about the focused practice program is a modern one.
It started with a text message, which led to a blog post, which reached thousands of readers, many of them hospitalists interested in how to bolster their bona fides in a specialty known for its explosive growth in recent years.
Now, hospitalists certified in internal medicine have the opportunity to reinforce their commitment to the specialty by maintaining their certification through the Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine pathway offered by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). The Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine (FPHM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program enables hospitalists to distinguish their practice within the larger specialty of internal medicine.
The Evolution of FPHM
The new pathway has been years in the making, and it reflects the growing influence of HM in healthcare, according to ABIM Chief Medical Officer Eric Holmboe, MD. He sees the FPHM as the result of a combination of factors, including the fact that the specialty now has more than 30,000 hospitalists practicing nationwide. “If you look at the past years, this has been a viable and vibrant practice,” he says. “If you look at the number of people doing hospital medicine, it’s a factor.”
For Holmboe, it also is a shift in how individuals are recognized based on their practice areas. “This is an acknowledgement by ABIM and the American Board of Medical Specialties to look at Maintenance of Certification in terms of what the individual actually does,” he explains. “Hospitalists play a very important role in the hospital.”
He also credits the leadership of the HM movement—especially pioneers like Robert Wachter, MD, FHM. One of HM’s most ardent champions, Dr. Wachter, chief of the hospital medicine division, professor, and associate chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, worked with ABIM to find a way to recognize hospitalists’ specialized skill sets and their commitment to inpatient medicine. After more than a decade of advocating for a board-certified process to recognize the field, Dr. Wachter, an ABIM board member, began receiving multiple text messages from colleagues announcing that ABIM had approved the focused-practice program. He wrote a post on his blog, Wachter’s World (www.wachtersworld.com), that outlined the need for the FPHM and the significance for aspiring hospitalists.
“In any case, this is an important milestone for the field,” Dr. Wachter wrote in his Sept. 23, 2009, blog entry, “Board Certification for Hospitalists: It’s Heeeere!” “In fact, when I first began speaking to groups of hospitalists nearly 15 years ago, I often showed a slide listing the elements of a true specialty, and one by one we’ve ticked them off,” wrote Dr. Wachter, a former SHM president. “The only unchecked box was recognition of the field as a legitimate ‘specialty,’ as codified by the ABMS board certification process.”
Unchecked, that is, until now.
In early 2011, the medical world will be introduced to the first internists recognized for their focus in HM. For Holmboe, the FPHM is the beginning of an even larger movement.
“The goal is continued interest: getting people involved in quality in their hospital and encouraging people to change behaviors and be recognized by patients and credentialists as valuable,” he says. “That’s the primary mission of ABIM: using certification to improve care.”
Fellow in Hospital Medicine Spotlight
O’Neil Pyke, MD, FHM
Dr. Pyke is a clinical instructor at Commonwealth Medical College and a medical director at the Wyoming Valley Health Care System in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He also serves as a consultant for various hospitalist programs, most actively for his own private consulting company, AMP Hospitalist Consulting, which partners with Salem, N.H.-based physician staffing company Medicus Healthcare Solutions.
Undergraduate Education: Queens College, City University of New York, Flushing, N.Y.
Medical School: Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health, Columbus
Notable: Dr. Pyke was born in Jamaica and moved to New York during high school. He says he owes everything to his parents. His parents, who had no education beyond high school, pushed Dr. Pyke and his siblings to achieve more than they did. His sister is an OB-GYN and his brother is pursuing a medical degree.
FYI: Dr. Pyke enjoys playing golf, cheering for his beloved Ohio State Buckeyes, and spends every Friday night with his wife and two daughters—he even admits to watching “chick flicks” on family night.
For more information about the FHM designation, visit www.hospitalmedicine.org/fellows.
Requirements and Process
Shortly after the program’s approval, ABIM, which administers the FPHM program, went to work in defining the process for the FPHM application and building infrastructure to support the tests. Holmboe expects ABIM will be ready to process pre-applications by April or May. While some details may change, the FPHM application will dovetail with ABIM’s MOC process.
Although hospitalists’ MOC must be current in order to apply for FPHM, hospitalists can begin the FPHM application process at any time. Hospitalists do not need to wait until their next MOC renewal.
Before beginning the application process, hospitalists should ensure that they are eligible. ABIM requires FPHM candidates to have:
- A current or previous ABIM certification in internal medicine;
- A valid, unrestricted medical license and confirmation of good standing in the local practice community;
- ACLS certification; and
- At least three years of hospital medicine practice experience.
Candidates who meet the requirements can then begin the enrollment process by:
- Submitting attestations. Both the hospitalist and a senior officer at the hospital must provide attestations that demonstrate the hospitalist’s experience in HM and his or her commitment to the principles of the specialty.
- Performing a self-assessment. Hospitalists must quantify their experience in HM through an MOC self-assessment. Candidates must achieve at least 100 MOC points. Successful applicants must submit a new self-assessment every three years. The self-assessment can be conducted before or after the exam.
- Taking the MOC examination in Hospital Medicine. Registration for the first HM examination will begin in May. The exam will be conducted in October, and diplomates can take the exam at any time in the process.
Passing the exam and completing the other requirements will earn ABIM diplomats recognition as “Board Certified in Internal Medicine with a Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine.” ABIM will notify successful applicants in late 2010 and ship personalized certificates in early 2011. TH
Brendon Shank is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.