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03/27/2023 Randall Brower, DPM
Board Certification Summit (Ivar E. Roth, DPM, MPH)
I am glad this is finally coming to a head. There are two fundamental issues that are being conflated. Hospital admitting privileges vs. surgical privileges. I want to speak to surgical privileging. For the 20 years, I have been practicing in two states and over a dozen hospitals, it is a fact that MANY podiatrists use the IGNORANCE of the credentialing bodies of hospitals and surgery centers to gain surgical privileges they are not certified to perform.
I have seen podiatrists use ABMSP Board Certification (one of a few examples) to get privileges / or attempt to get privileges to perform rearfoot and trauma surgery at hospitals. Credentialing boards at hospitals for decades have just assumed that Podiatry is the same as other surgical specialties that have one recognized national surgical certifying board for surgical competency in the field. So when they see a podiatrist put "board certified by....ABMSP " for example. Many boards say, "oh, ok. Cool! He/She is competent and certified." ...having no idea the podiatrist has done little to no surgical residency training and may not be competent.
ABPS (ABFAS) has historically been the certifying board nationally as that SINGULAR board.
ABMSP, for instance, will give a certification for foot and ankle surgery with NO RESIDENCY, as long as the podiatrist has been practicing for 20 years. A podiatrist can learn surgery on the fly in their office surgery suite for 20 years, with no oversight and no residency and get certified. THIS IS A PROBLEM. In 2003, there were plenty of residency programs available.
We should be upping our surgical certification requirements/aptitude. If we continue to allow any board to spring up, call themselves a certifying board and certify undertrained podiatrists as surgeons, we will ruin our role as pre-eminent foot& ankle surgeons.
Larger hospital systems are finally waking up to the podiatry smorgas"board" charade and requiring to see numbers of procedures performed within 2-4 years, years of residency completed, etc. I encourage many of us ABFAS certified podiatrists to volunteer to be on credentialing committees in our hospitals to ensure public safety and see that the reputation of our profession is not watered down or tainted.
Randall Brower, DPM, Avondale, AZ
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