About Maintaining Certification

ABMS Member Boards support physicians’ transition from training to practice through AMOC. The MOC program provides physicians a mechanism to maintain their certification through their engagement in continuous, specialty-specific learning, assessment, and improvement activities. The activities in MOC are based on the competency framework defined by the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education and ABMS. They are aligned with the principles of the ABMS standards and address the changing performance expectations and the various settings, patients, and challenges physicians encounter in practice. The competencies include:

• Professionalism – Carrying out responsibilities safely and ethically.
• Patient care and procedural skills – Providing compassionate, appropriate, and effective patient care.
• Medical knowledge – Demonstrating medical knowledge and its application to patient care.
• Practice-based learning and improvement – Continuously improving patient care through self-evaluation and lifelong learning.
• Interpersonal and communication skills – Facilitating effective information exchange and collaboration with patients, their families, and other health professionals.
• Systems-based practice – Ability to call on other system resources to provide optimal health care.

Subject experts at each specialty board and their related societies actively seek or develop tools and make available learning opportunities to support the self-assessment and performance improvement requirements of MOC. The activities reflect the evidence-based guidelines, national clinical and quality standards, and specialty best practices agreed upon by the Member Boards. They can include clinical databases and registries, peer evaluations, and practice audits that gauge the physician, system, and patient relationship.