235.999 MSSNY’s Non-Support of NYS Advisory Committee on Physician Recredentialing Report
The Report of the New York State Advisory Committee on Physician Re-credentialing entitled “Phase One: General Principles, Proposed Process, Recommendations” was released in January of 1988. MSSNY does not endorse this report or its recommendations. Historically, quality assurance (optimal patient care) and physician competency have been the foundations upon which the policies and positions of the MSSNY have been developed. Over the past decade, the assurance of quality and maintaining of competence, a responsibility, which rightly belongs within the purview of the profession (all professions), has been gradually assumed to a large extent by agencies external to the profession. Perhaps well intentioned, the regulatory mechanisms developed by these external agencies have had a deleterious effect on the delivery of medical care but have had little impact on physician clinical performance.
MSSNY agrees with the statement, made on several occasions in the report, that the re-credentialing process broadly outlined in the report “is not designed to measure medical competence.” Indeed the report does little more than discuss those well-known methods used to evaluate those various, individual components which taken collectively are used to define knowledge and cognitive skills, not performance. We agree with the report that there does not exist a single methodology for measuring competency and agree that employment of a combination of methodologies to measure competency would be logistically and economically unrealistic. The evaluation of competence in the health professions has not yet reached maturity. Measurement of changes in practice as a consequence of additional education, assessment of the validity of examinations and the determination of goals for competence are all necessary parts of the ongoing development of competence evaluation. As stated in the beginning of this statement, MSSNY is committed to quality assurance and maintaining competence of health professionals. However, we do not need further government intrusion to do what already is being done. Accordingly, the MSSNY subscribes to the following recommendations of the “Health Policy Agenda for the American People”:
(1) Health professionals are individually responsible for maintaining their competence and for participating in continuing education; all health professionals should be engaged in self-selected programs of continuing education. In the absence of other financial support, individual health professionals should be responsible for the cost of their own continuing education.
(2) Professional schools and health professions organizations should develop additional continuing education self-assessment programs, should prepare guides to continuing education programs to be taken by practitioners throughout their careers and should make efforts to ensure that acceptable programs of continuing education are available to practitioners.
(3) Health professions organizations and faculty of programs of health professions education should develop standards for competence. Such standards should be reviewed and revised periodically.
(4) When reliable and cost-effective means of assessing continuing competence are developed, they should be required for continued practice. This should be done without government interference or control. (HOD 1988-25; Reaffirmed HOD 2013; Reaffirmed HOD 2023; Reaffirmed HOD 2024)
