ABIM to appoint non-internists to its governance

The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) has announced that it will begin including a non-internist member of the health team and a public member with a patient/caregiver perspective on each of its specialty boards.

Additionally, in an effort to ensure that board governance represents the voice of the physician in practice, the ABIM council also voted that each of the specialty boards will include a minimum of 1 practitioner whose primary practice is in a non-university, community setting. The organization recently announced its decision in a press release.

“As a physician who practiced in a community-based setting for nearly 30 years, I know that community-based physicians face different demands and expectations from those who work primarily in a university setting,” said Richard J. Baron, MD, MACP, president and CEO of ABIM, in the press release. “Although ABIM has been actively recruiting non-academic physicians for Board positions for years, requiring it now in the membership composition of the Specialty Boards signifies the importance of ensuring their voice will be represented in the design of Certification and Maintenance of Certification.”

ABIM will begin a search for the clinician and public board members through a call for nominations. The board of directors and the ABIM council are part of a new governance structure that was announced in July.

The ABIM board of directors oversees the overall strategic direction of the organization and supports efforts to make Maintenance of Certification and the certification credential relevant and valuable to the broader health care community and to all the internists who participate in it. The ABIM council guides the policies and procedures for Certification and Maintenance of Certification in all of the disciplines of internal medicine.