WHEREAS: licensure boards are considering onerous new requirements for physicians to continue to practice, including board certification or recertification; and
WHEREAS: advocates for expensive recertification requirements have a financial conflict of interest in the revenue they gain from physicians’ being forced to pay them for examinations and materials preparing for examinations; and
WHEREAS: such requirements will significantly increase the cost of and decrease access to medical care; and
WHEREAS: there is no evidence that frequent cramming for board examinations improves physicians’ skills or assures patients’ safety; and
WHEREAS: distraction from self-designed study, patient care, or even rest and recreation, in order to satisfy a specialty board’s demands, may actually reduce physicians’ efficiency or competence; and
WHEREAS: dictating the means whereby professionals maintain their competence and skills is neither within the competence nor constitutional authority of governmental agencies,
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT: the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons oppose the imposition of additional licensure or relicensure requirements that are not shown, in valid scientific studies, to produce gains in quality of care outweighing costs and diminished availability.
