Failing case review ABFAS

[josebiwasabi]

I dont know when you completed case review, but they now SPECIFICALLY say you absolutely cannot addend notes. I recognize there is a difference between revising your progress notes and adding a separate letter at the beginning of the case to explain something, but I think anyone attempting to do this should get the okay from ABFAS first.

you can addend notes as much as you want as long as the time stamp on it is PRIOR to the date that ABFAS chooses which of your cases to review.

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[air bud]

Addendum: the patient's bunion came back due to their severe noncompliance. I had specifically told them that they must wear a bunion splint apparatus 24/7 for the next 5 years.

*custom

 

[ExperiencedDPM]

This is very simple. You need to include an addendum that states:

1) I woke up and went to the bathroom. My wife bought new toilet paper and not Cottonelle. As a result some “residue” was left behind and I didn’t feel clean back there.

2) I jumped on my Peloton and had a great 5 minute ride and no one on the leader board high fived me.

3) The barista at the Starbucks drive thru didn’t make my latte correctly.

4). The surgery center wouldn’t let me use my fav $7500 6D Lapidus correction hardware set.

5) The surgery center wouldn’t let me use $6000 worth of toe implants for my hammertoe repairs and made me use this primitive thing called a “K” wire.

6). The C-arm didn’t have the resolution and broad enough gray scale for me to get one good image out of the 58 images I took.

7). The surgery center and insurance wouldn’t pay for the $5000 skin substitute I wanted to place around the osteotomy to enhance healing.

8). The insurance wouldn’t allow me to use PRP or BMA to enhance bone healing.

9). The insurance wouldn’t pay for the 12 nerve blocks I gave post operatively.

10). The patient showed up 8 minutes late for her appointment.

As you can see, ALL of the factors above that were ALL out of my control ended up causing the suboptimal result.

Include all of the above and it’s a sure bet you’ll get your cases approved.

 

[Feli]

Out of curiosity, do you know if the appeal process was a rolling review (pay for the appeal and get your own panel) or did they wait to see how many appeals they had by the deadline and have one panel review everyone?

I think it’s just one panel that reviews everything.

I am pretty sure the review is just one person seeing if they agree with the first scoring (not sure if that initial case review is one person or a panel). There is enough subjectivity in the cert case review that close scores can definitely get reversed from fail to pass, depending on which way the wind's blowing.
A couple of my friends have inquired about it since it is pretty tedious chasing down records from years ago at past jobs and re-submitting when you're a busy attending. It is tough to fail repeatedly... and mostly on documentation. You can call ABFAS and ask them how it works, though... the review is a pretty new thing, but they are usually pretty helpful.

It might be worth trying the review if you got 490/500 or maybe 480 on case review... and/or if it's your last chance to pass. It is one thing to risk $4k if you just need one or two of their points deductions reversed and have multiple places where the deductions were debatable, but for most young attendings, it's still a pretty big risk to gamble that money vanishing instead of paying down student loan or plugging IRA if you can simply re-take ABFAS case submit the next year and hope you get a more favorable case set / reviewer.