This is bad advice. The longer you wait the more painful it will become. Take your lumps and pay the blackmail. The way the medical community is going, I have to think that there will be changes coming to MOC. They got greedy and physicians are pissed.
There was just a NEJM letter on this issue. Everyone knows it is a scam.
Everyone's got to do what they need to for their own interests. If you (and by that I mean the general 'you' who may be reading this, I'm not addressing this to any previous poster) think it's better for your life to take the boards ASAP, that's up to you. I'm just saying that there's more to consider than the exam itself.
For example: if you don't currently live in a city with a PearsonVue test center but may move to one in a year or two (or vice versa), that's something to factor in. PearsonVue doesn't have test centers set up in as many cities as you would think, so take possible travel and hotel accommodations into account. I'd recommend taking the exam when you don't have to travel far to the test center, be that sooner or later.
If you don't already know if your city has a test center but have already decided to take the exam as soon as you can, that would suggest that you aren't seeing the big picture.
Also, I'd guess that less than 10% of people who haven't yet taken the initial certification exam know what MOC entails (it's not just a knowledge assessment. Not at all) and that well above 70% of them think they just have to take another exam in 10 years to recertify. If that applies to you, I really think you need to read about what's going on with certification and the ABIM because it's not what you think.
Also, look at the pass rate data for first time certifiers as well as first time MOC test takers:
http://www.abim.org/about/examInfo/data-pass-rates.aspx
In case you don't already know this, the initial certification exam is a different exam than the recertification MOC exam. You can come to your own conclusion as to why the initial certification exam pass rate has stayed in the 84-88% range while the recertification exam pass rate has dropped from 90% to 78% in 5 years (that's the extent of data the ABIM has available on their website. I've heard CEO Baron of the ABIM say that the pass rate for MOC was in the low 80's in one of the years prior to 2009 but they still haven't formally released that so I don't know if he's mistaken or just plain lying). And BTW-- these pass rates were all for FIRST TIME initial certification exam takers and FIST TIME MOC exam takers (that is, people who are at least 10 years post-residency but probably not much more than that) so if there are any 'hopeless' test takers who keep failing the exam year to year, they aren't being represented multiple years in the above graph. It's a pretty homogeneous group.
A discussion about that is here:
http://paulmdphd.blogspot.com/2014/07/dr-wes-post-is-important-but-based-only.html
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2014/04...rnal-medicine-recertification-pass-rates.html
and if you are on Sermo:
https://app.sermo.com/posts/posts/224632
and the ABIM responded
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/MedicalEducation/47601
"Once a passing standard for a discipline area is set,
pass rates differ from year to year
solely because the characteristics of physicians taking the exam change each time it is given. A number of examinee-specific factors -- such as examinee motivation, training, preparation, and knowledge -- impact pass rates."
So according to the ABIM, it's not the test's fault at all but the test takers' fault? That is patently absurd. While test takers may change year to year, their general characteristics over will even out over the
thousands that take the exam every year. I understand why the ABIM is so protective about their test-- it's their moneymaker. That doesn't make them right, it just exposes their bias and conceit that they are not capable of making a bad test (try reading about what constitutes a 'passing standard' on the ABIM website. It's dressed in psychometric jargon to make it harder to understand but amounts to "we asked a few people whom we consider to be experts to decide what the minimum standard is" which is entirely subject to bias. They can tweak the difficulty level of the exam however they want by manipulating the 'experts' to make more difficult questions that have nothing to do with practical medical knowledge).
Anyway, I hope you (the poster I quoted above) are right and change is coming; but just because physicians are pissed, doesn't mean anything is going to change. People far underestimate the degree the certification process has been perverted into a self-enrichment scheme for the ABIM. Too much money is at stake for the ABIM to change and they aren't even very clever about hiding their excesses.
Tha ABIM-Foundation 'invested' in a $2.3M luxury condo in downtown Philly (now on sale for $1.4M. So, a nice negative $900,000 return on that investment):
http://drwes.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-abim-foundation-choosing-wisely-and.html
The PA Medical Society had this meeting with the ABIM to discuss/defend MOC. You can see it here:
http://www.pamedsoc.org/MainMenuCategories/Education/MOC/Video-MOC-Debate.html
And some of the Q&A session afterward:
I don't think that everybody knows it's a scam. Or if they do, they don't want to think that it's that bad. I have to tell you that it is worse than you could imagine and won't change without action by younger physicians. I have colleagues who initially have the attitude of "Yeah, I know it's BS. But what are we supposed to do?" that changes to "
WTF??!?! Holy cow! I can't believe that!" after they read about it and watch the videos.
The ABIM has been working on this long con for 25+ years. They know how we think what we're afraid of and are in control of the rules. It's hard to fight back when your opponent has a long head start to practice.
Sorry for the long diatribe. Just wanted to emphasize that this isn't just a test you have to pass and that its implications are much farther reaching than you can begin to imagine.
