Primary care physicians that are not board certified?
Looking for a new PCP today and I noticed that none of the local providers seem to be board certified. The insurance website has this description of what they consider “board certified”:
“Board Certification – When a health care practitioner is board certified, it means that he or she has applied for and been awarded certification from the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), American Osteopathic Association, or other recognized board. Board certification is a voluntary process. To become board certified, a physician must:
Graduate from an accredited professional school
Complete a specific type and length of training in a specialty
Practice for a specified amount of time in that specialty
Pass an examination given by the professional specialty board”
How much does it matter that they aren’t certified? It seems like it should be required, right?
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5 Answers
Board certification is a credential, that (depending on specialty) means that the doc has taken extra coursework and has had additional testing to ensure his education is more complete.
That certainly does not mean that a non-Board certified doc is at all worse or lower quality – not at all. For a general purpose internist, that credential doesn’t really mean that much.
Where Board certified is more meaningful is in specialties like nephrology, cardiology, pulmonology, urology, where deeper subject expertise in a special area is more likely to be useful, because the specialist is seeing people with specific and often more acute problems.
I would have no hesitation seeing a non-board-certified generalist.
Is there board certification for primary care? I thought it was only for specialties (cardiology, surgery, internal medicine, etc).
A primary care physician doesn’t practice in any specialty field, so there’s no reason for him to be board certified in any specialty.
Personally, I would avoid anybody who is not board certified. It either means they didn’t do a residency or they couldn’t pass the test.
Primary care physicians can be family physicians (for everybody), internists (for adults), or pediatricians (for kids). They are all board certified in their respective specialties and have had at least 3 years of extra training after medical school.
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