1. Maintenance of Certification and the ABIM
One of the ACC’s six strategic priorities is to act as a provider of processes to maintain professional competence. As part of this effort, the College is committed to finding a solution or solutions to the ABIM’s MOC process that best meet the professional needs of clinicians, while also giving patients, the public and other stakeholders confidence that the care provided by their physicians is of the highest quality.

2. ACC Input to ABIM Has Created Change:
Reversal of the double jeopardy provision
Decoupling of the initial board exam from MOC participation
Streamlining the ability for practitioners to get both CME and MOC Part II credit
Suspending MOC Part IV requirement
The ACC has been tremendously instrumental in making real change occur surrounding MOC. These include:
Reversal of double jeopardy provision which ABIM announced in July This means it is eliminating the requirement to maintain underlying certification in a foundational discipline in order to remain certified in a subspecialty. For cardiology, this means that those specializing in interventional, electrophysiology, adult congenital and advanced heart failure will no longer need to pass both the general cardiology and sub-specialty boards.
Decoupling board certification exam from MOC participation in August This means the ABIM is reversing its policy requiring physicians who have passed the initial Certification exam in 2014 or later to have enrolled in the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) process in order to be listed as board certified. Effective immediately, physicians who are meeting all other programmatic requirements will not lose certification simply for failure to enroll in MOC. This decision is a direct result of ACC's efforts over the last two months seeking an expedited resolution of this issue by ABIM.
Streamlining the ability for practitioners to get both CME and MOC Part II credit. This means the ABIM will provide more opportunities for physicians to earn Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Part II points for activities with a self-assessment component that have traditionally been designated as CME credits only. Specifically, ABIM indicated it would develop ways to recognize most forms of CME approved by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), thus “allowing new and more flexible ways” for physicians to demonstrate self-assessment of medical knowledge. The ABIM provided an update on these efforts and announced an official collaboration with ACCME that will expand the options available to physicians to receive MOC credit by enabling CME providers, like the ACC, to offer more lifelong learning CME-MOC options. The ACC, along with other cardiology and internal medicine association stakeholders, has been diligent over the last two years in our efforts to encourage ABIM to expand MOC Part II options available to physicians and reduce redundancy with CME, as well as allow societies to more easily offer lifelong learning activities for MOC. This move is a direct result of these efforts and is a big step forward in our ongoing work to represent the needs of our members and to collaborate with the ABIM in their efforts to “ensure that ABIM and MOC evolve to better reflect the changing nature of medical practice.”
Delaying MOC Part IV

3. The BIG Announcement:
The ABIM will begin offering physicians a new MOC assessment option in January 2018.
NOTE: ABIM's current 10-year exam will remain available as a second assessment option.

4. The new assessment option will:
Take the form of shorter assessments that doctors can choose to take on their personal or office computer—with appropriate identity verification and security—more frequently than every 10 years but no more than annually;
Provide feedback on important knowledge gap areas so physicians can better plan their learning to stay current in knowledge and practice; and
Allow physicians who engage in and perform well on these shorter assessments to test out of the current assessment taken every 10 years.

5. The ACC’s online MOC hub at www. ACC
The ACC’s online MOC hub at and ACC in Touch Blog at blog.acc.org contain the latest MOC resources and updates, including free MOC activities.