09/15/2025    Frank Louis Lepore, DPM, MBA

APMA Refusal to Meet With ACGME (Lee Rogers, DPM)

I am deeply disappointed and angered by the
American Podiatric Medical Association’s (APMA)
decision not to engage in dialogue with the
Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical
Education (ACGME). This choice does not serve the
best interests of the podiatric community and
risks undermining years of strategic efforts in
gaining parity and Board unification of podiatry.

Our profession has worked diligently to achieve
parity with our MD and DO colleagues—working with
their organization on common ground in the
interest of our professions, expanding applicant
pools to podiatric medical schools, investing in
targeted marketing, and advocating for broader
recognition. These initiatives were designed to
elevate the visibility and credibility of
podiatric medicine. Without collaboration with
ACGME, these resources may be better spent
elsewhere or may not achieve the intended Return
on Investment (ROI).

We have also conducted extensive outreach to CMS,
Medicaid, the VA, and state legislatures to secure
equitable treatment and recognition. APMA’s
decision jeopardizes the progress made in these
areas and threatens the momentum we’ve built and
continue to seek.

PM News has had many discussions and topics in the
past from authors like: Tomzack, Block, Jacobs and
many others about our future: whether regarding
medical school applications, changing DPM to MD or
dual degree representation and so forth. The
debates although futile has gone unactionable have
resulted in the predicament that we find ourselves
in, unfortunately in hostile medical care
environment with no end in sight other than in my
opinion a dying profession because we cannot get
our act together with diminishing applicant pools
to our school, jeopardizing our current residency
programs that are filled and paid for.

Furthermore, the encroachment of PAs and ANRPs who
are creeping into our practice spaces providing
similar or like services without the designated
training that we have worked so hard to develop
and achieve has gone responded to.

Letters by the President of AOFAS who has written
articles contrary to our profession, for which our
APMA thankfully is responding to and should have
been exemplified harsher language threatening
litigation and defamation not just retraction.
We must ask ourselves the proverbial questions:

• Where do we go from here?
• What kind of profession do we want?
• Why kind of educational processes do we seek?
• Do we really want parity or not?
• Will podiatry survive the onslaught of new age
with development of AI?
• How do we want to practice going forward?

These are some questions we much contemplate going
forward and must consider.

This opportunity is a once-in-a- lifetime event!
“Thank GOD” for those of us who are forward
thinking and trying to better our craft and
profession and have opened the pathway for this
opportunity to occur. I think is truly a missed
opportunity, on behalf of our membership. I have
published a road map for our profession, which has
gone on deaf ears, of which this was discussed and
published in PM news by Block and his staff, of
which ACGME accreditation was a key component.

Residency accreditation, standardization of
Fellowship programs, unification of the Boards for
Podiatry which would ultimately unite the
profession going forward is all part of ACGME
processes to come.

This ultimately will increase our hand in securing
legislative momentum, help in combating regulation
by governmental and insurance industries all in
conjunction with our medical colleague’s MD’s and
DO’s strengthening the APMA organization and its
state components, not weaken it (as may be
perceived). It’s not a giving up of power but
rather a symbiotic relationship that would occur
to strengthen our hand at what we do- providing
good podiatric standards of care to our
constituent patient population while at the same
time getting recognized finally for what we do and
maybe achieving the parity that we so longed for.
I
urge all colleagues to write their APMA
representatives and state component leaders to
rescind this decision and reconsider it in
transparent and open fashion.

Frank Louis Lepore, DPM, MBA. Port Charlotte, FL

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