The APA’s membership is declining, and the Board of Trustee’s position on MOC is partly to blame. The APA is once again not listening to its members! As a membership-driven organization, the APA must not exclusively support and promote this commercial educational product termed MOC when other, less expensive alternatives are now available. The APA can easily endorse these alternatives, in addition to offering its own less expensive products for attesting maintenance of competence. The latter effort will help eliminate the monopoly held by ABMS/ABPN in this domain and please all members as well as the DOJ.
The APA’s failure to provide less expensive alternatives or at least endorse existing ones despite repeated requests from a large number of APA members has led to frustration and a surge of strong feelings that are expressed on the APA email listservs, and especially that of the MOC caucus. These expressions are legitimate and need to be publicized to the general membership. I have collected the opinions of various loyal, long-standing APA members and put together a separate, yet-unpublished article to drive home the point that APA has resisted breaking the monopoly of ABPN, which the DOJ would encourage organizations such as the APA to do. Instead, APA is acting as an enabler to ABPN to create a multi-million dollar (and eventually a billion dollar) monopolistic industry at their members’ expense, literally endangering the careers of members if they fail to participate when employed by institutions that overvalue the MOC offered by ABPN.
I believe the recent exhibition of “collaboration” between the APA and ABPN is not similar to that between ACGME and ABPN, but is a most blatant effort on the part of the APA to help ABPN build a billion-dollar educational industry over the next 10 to 15 years. One can easily lose sight of this and get lost in the intricacies of how candidates can maintain their competency by obtaining free CME credits. The APA is distracting its members by citing this. They will continue to pay a high price for certification and recertification, with no real discount.
Most of the APA’s 38,000 members are in the dark about the above-mentioned process. They need to do their own research, especially when there are alternatives to the ABPN’s MOC program. They need to insist that the APA stop exclusively promoting ABPN products, and publicize other, much cheaper, alternatives. It will please all APA members to see the ABPN’s monopoly vanish. This is especially the case for younger psychiatrists, who average nearly $250,000 in educational loans. They need to prevent the APA/ABPN collaboration from having a far-reaching effect on their careers and finances, with potentially destructive consequences for their families, employers and—most importantly—their patients. Even some state licensing boards are being tempted to buy into the illusion.
Stop this MOCkery.