What is Maintenance of Certification (and what happened to recertification)?
Maintenance of Certification (MOC) is a voluntary, continuous learning process that provides board-certified physicians a mechanism to demonstrate their commitment to high quality care within their specialty. It is a voluntary process for time-unlimited certificate holders. The MOC process assesses physicians’ skills and knowledge in a changing medical specialty where active, on-going learning is key to practicing state-of-the-art specialty medical care. MOC was developed in an attempt to assure patients and other outside entities that they are receiving the most up-to-date and quality care from physicians who use best practices and evidence-based standards for care. The ABMS has developed MOC to provide the general public with a means to assess a physician’s credentials as a provider of quality healthcare. All 24 specialty member boards have developed their own MOC processes which evaluate the six core competencies for quality patient care as outlined by the ACGME.
