03/28/2023    Name Withheld

Board Certification Summit (Ivar E. Roth, DPM, MPH)

For years, I have sat silent reading the debate of
my colleagues over board certification. It is
amazing that a professional as limited as
podiatry, with limitation on license and scope of
practice, lack of job availability, competition
from PAs, NPs, orthopods, we find more ways to
hinder our profession to get ahead. Board
certification, is yet another self-imposed
limitation placed by us on our members.

I unfortunately did not have the chance to become
board certified. I did a RPR-PSR12 residency when
there was fierce competition for residency slots
and there was no structures in place for 3 year
residency. By being a RPR resident, I am
automatically disqualified by APBM. The CPME, the
body that came up for RPRs, POR, PPMR PSRs, for
some reason decided that RPR was not good enough
to qualify for ABPM. There is absolutely no rhymes
or reasons for that decision, since as a RPR, I
did the same rotation as a POR and PPMR...Then
came the challenges post residency. Most jobs back
when I graduated were focusing on general podiatry
care. I had to search for surgical cases. I was
also limited with the age of the population, as
well as the social economical instability of my
patients.

Surgical options were geared toward safely and
quickly getting patients back on their feet. I
could not do Scarfs on osteoporotic 80 year pts.
It is not only highly risky but it is immoral.
Then came Obama care, with switching of patients
to closed HMO panels. Finally after 10 years of
practice, I started performing more surgeries, but
when the time came to submit my cases to ABPS,
after 10 years, paying $2,500 for a board
certification, I was told I could not be certified
due to lack of VARIETY. Fortunately I was able to
be certified by ABLES.

20 years after residency, now comes the limitation
of certification we are placing which would again
prevent me, and many like me practicing podiatry
as any other certified podiatrist can. Currently,
I am in the process of discussing the limitation
of board certification imposed by hospitals and by
insurances, lobbied by current boards, with
several high powered attorneys, and I am hoping to
bring a class action lawsuit against CPME, ABFAS,
APBM boards for preventing non-certified DPMs,
from practicing podiatry freely and participating
in insurances and hospitals. This has to stop
somewhere.

Name Withheld

Other messages in this thread:

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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