Certification is a credential beyond state licensure, with standards set by family physicians. Being certified demonstrates your commitment to an ongoing process of keeping up to date and striving to deliver the best care possible to your patients and to your community. It also means you have met the standards for ethics and professionalism set by your peers.
As a family physician who is participating in continuous certification, benefits you will realize include:
- Recognition of your ongoing efforts to keep up to date in your medical knowledge and to improve the care you provide to patients and your community. Patients place faith in board certification and expect that it reflects ongoing education and practice improvement activities. They understand that keeping current requires constant work and practical application.
- Independent assessment of your medical knowledge, which will help with your ongoing learning. Studies have demonstrated that physicians often don’t recognize what they don’t know; Board certification helps with this.
- Ongoing participation in series of certification activities that you and your peers engage in to collectively ensure that all board-certified family physicians meet high standards of knowledge and trustworthiness. Numerous studies have demonstrated that certification is associated with greater expertise in Family Medicine, improvement in the quality of care delivered, and fewer adverse medical license actions.
- Recognition by patients, other physicians, hospitals, insurers, employers, and the public that you have met high standards of physician quality. They believe that Board Certified physicians are better physicians.
Your certificate means a lot, and we will work with you to maintain its value!
Patients often seek information about their physician’s certification through ABFM’s Find a Physician or through the American Board of Medical Specialties Certification Matters website. ABFM is one of the member boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), whose mission is to serve the public by improving the quality of health care through setting professional standards for lifelong certification in partnership with its Member Boards. More information about the Value of Board Certification can be found at: Value of Board Certification to Health Care