A debate has erupted within medicine over how to ensure that physicians maintain their clinical skills throughout their careers. The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) has long required internists to pass Maintenance of Certification exams every 10 years to keep their board-certified status. However, this policy has recently come under scrutiny due to its high burden to doctors and the lack of sound evidence that recertification processes improve doctors’ quality of care. In response, the ABIM announced it would offer a new assessment option starting in January 2018, allowing doctors to be recertified through shorter, but more frequent, assessments. But it’s not clear that this will make much difference. In fact, it raises a couple of important questions: Are assessments even the most effective way to incentivize doctors to keep up with the latest medical knowledge and new technologies? Why don’t we directly measure physicians’ quality of care and patient outcomes as they grow older?
Do Doctors Get Worse as They Get Older?
Hospitalized Medicare patients treated by younger physicians were less likely to die within 30 days.
May 23, 2017
Summary.
The relationship between physician age and patient outcomes has not been empirically studied at a large scale. The authors decided to investigate this issue by analyzing the outcomes of hospitalized Medicare patients and the age of their treating physicians. Their study, recently published in The British Medical Journal, found that patients treated by older physicians were more likely to die within 30 days of hospitalization compared with patients treated by younger physicians – unless the older physicians were used to treating large numbers of patients each year.
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