iHEALTHY2015 ANNUAL REPORT

HEALTHY This year’s annual report theme of Healthy focuses on one of the core values of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Good health in all its forms — the health of patients and communities — as well as the state’s physi-cians, practices, and the medical profession as a whole.

We’d like to tell you about some of our highlights through the voices of our members who have contributed so much over these past 12 months. In Healthy Communities, we look at MMS efforts to educate prescribers and patients about the safe and responsible pre-scribing and handling of opioids. In Healthy Practices, we explore the ever-changing landscape of practice transformation through the eyes of members who have successfully navigated federal regulatory shifts in Medicare payment systems and Meaningful Use regulations.

We’ll hear from some of the MMS’s more than 25,000 members about the value of organized medicine, especially for young and early-career physicians in Healthy Profession. And in Healthy Knowledge, we’ll review the exciting knowledge-sharing initiatives developed by our NEJM Group over the past year.

Thank you for your support this year — and in the years to come — as we strive to serve the Commonwealth’s physicians and their patients.

Corinne Broderick, Executive Vice President

STRATEGIC PRIORITIES 2015–2016That the MMS strategic priorities for 2015–2016 are the following: improve health care quality, access, and equity for patients, while delivering cost-effective care and promoting a sound public health system for the Commonwealth. In order to advance the mission of the MMS, the goals of our strategic plan will be the following:

• PHYSICIAN ADVOCACY: solidify the position of the MMS as a leader and credible voice at the state and federal level for physicians in any practice environment or setting. The MMS will carefully monitor the impact of the rapidly transforming health care delivery system, while identifying and developing physician implementation strategies.

• PATIENT CARE ADVOCACY: work to identify and minimize barriers to access to care; will assist physicians in their efforts to achieve high quality, cost effective care; and will support accu-rate, reliable, timely, and meaningful quality and cost data, in a manner that meets physician expectations for transparency.

• PRESERVATION OF PROFESSIONALISM: advocate for health care environments that foster a culture that ensures patient- centered, physician-led care; and promotes professional satisfaction and a commitment to lifelong learning. 

MMS Executive Vice President Corinne Broderick

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CONTENTSLetter from the Executive Vice President ii

Strategic Priorities 2015–2016 ii

Leadership iv

Healthy Communities 2

An Epidemic That Starts in the Medicine Cabinet 3

A High-Wire Balancing Act 3

No Time to Waste 4

Every Physician Has a Role 5

Healthy Practices 6

Bipartisan Victory 7

“Your Voices Were Heard” 8

Electronic Health Records and Meaningful Use 9

Healthy Profession 10

Growth in Physician and Residency Groups Statewide 12

Future of Medicine 13

Healthy Knowledge 14

Excellence in a Question Bank 15

MMS Headquarters, Waltham

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LEADERSHIPMMS and District Leadership, 2014–2015Richard S. Pieters, MD, PresidentDennis Dimitri, MD, President-ElectJames S. Gessner, MD, Vice PresidentAlain A. Chaoui, MD, Secretary-TreasurerCorey Collins, DO, Assistant Secretary-TreasurerJesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH, Speaker, House of DelegatesDavid A. Rosman, MD, MBA, Vice Speaker, House of DelegatesRonald W. Dunlap, MD, Immediate Past PresidentPaula J. Madison, Alliance PresidentCorinne Broderick, Executive Vice President

BARNSTABLE Maryanne C. Bombaugh, MD, Trustee Anna A. Manatis, MD, MPH, Alternate Trustee Kenneth A. Heisler, MD, District President

BERKSHIRE Basil M. Michaels, MD, Trustee and District President Robert Hertzig, MD, Alternate Trustee

BRISTOL NORTH Julia F. Edelman, MD, Trustee and District PresidentChristopher Garofolo, MD, Trustee

BRISTOL SOUTH Barry Steinberg, MD, Trustee David S. Adelstein III, DO, Alternate Trustee Jagdish R. Shah, MD, District President

CHARLES RIVERHubert I. Caplan, MD, TrusteeAlan Semine, MD, Alternate Trustee Darshan H. Mehta, MD, MPH, District President

ESSEX NORTH William A. Cook, MD, Trustee Vincent J. Russo, MD, Alternate Trustee Glenn P. Kimball, MD, District President

ESSEX SOUTH Keith C. Nobil, MD, Trustee Hugh M. Taylor, MD, Alternate Trustee Susan Moynihan, MD, District President

FRANKLIN Sarah A. Kemble, MD, MPH, Trustee William F. Doyle, MD, Alternate Trustee Stephen H. Fox, MD, District President

HAMPDEN Kevin P. Moriarty, MD, Trustee Claudia L. Koppelman, MD, Alternate Trustee Mary Kraft, MD, District President

HAMPSHIRE Daniel E. Clapp, MD, Trustee James R. Ralph, MD, Alternate Trustee Ann F. Mick, MD, District President

MIDDLESEX Carole E. Allen, MD, Trustee Lee S. Perrin, MD, Alternate Trustee Corey E. Collins, DO, District President

MIDDLESEX CENTRAL Thomas A. LaMattina, MD, Trustee Sarah Taylor, MD, Alternate Trustee and District President

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MIDDLESEX NORTH Navin Popat, MD, Trustee M. Denise Mills, MD, Alternate TrusteeNidhi K. Lal, MD, District President

MIDDLESEX WEST Judd L. Kline, MD, Trustee James F.X. Kenealy, MD, Alternate Trustee Stephen B. Berkowitz, MD, District President

NORFOLK Mangadhara R. Madineedi, MD, Trustee and District President John J. Looney, MD, Alternate Trustee

NORFOLK SOUTH John J. Walsh, MD, Trustee Melody J. Eckardt, MD, Alternate Trustee Patricia T. Hopkins, MD, District President

PLYMOUTH Edith M. Jolin, MD, MPH, Trustee B. Hoagland Rosania, MD, Alternate Trustee Salah Reyad, MD, District President

SUFFOLK Henry L. Dorkin, MD, Trustee Michael S. Annunziata, MD, Alternate TrusteeSubramanyan Jayasankar, District President

WORCESTER James B. Broadhurst, MD, Trustee Sahdev Passey, MD, Alternate TrusteeFrederic Baker, MD, District President

WORCESTER NORTH Heidi J. Foley, MD, Trustee Svend W. Bruun Jr., MD, Alternate Trustee John R. Bogdasarian, MD, District President

Joseph C. Bergeron Jr., MD, Chair of Finance McKinley Glover, MD, Resident Trustee Jawad Hussain, MD, Alternate Resident Trustee Gillian Griffith, Student Trustee Eli Freiman, Alternate Student Trustee

MMS LEADERSHIP 2014–2015 From left to right: David A. Rosman, MD; James S. Gessner, MD;

Dennis M. Dimitri, MD; Richard S. Pieters, MD; Alain Chaoui, MD; Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD; Corrine Broderick

Not pictured: Corey Collins, DO; Paula J. Madison

HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

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AN EPIDEMIC THAT STARTS IN THE MEDICINE CABINET“This is an epidemic that starts in the medicine cabinet,” said Michael Botticelli, director of the White House Office of National Drug Policy.

Mr. Botticelli was describing the national public health crisis that left virtually no Massachusetts community untouched in 2015: opioid abuse and addiction.

Nearly 4 in 10 state residents personally know someone who has abused pre-scription pain medications, and more than 80 percent of people who misuse prescription pain medications are using drugs prescribed to someone else.

His blunt words, spoken early this year as he prepared his keynote ad-dress to the Massachusetts Medical Society’s 2015 Public Health Leader-ship Forum, were quickly taken to heart by Society leaders.

It was clear that a physician-led opioid abuse prevention campaign that included education for both providers and patients was needed — and it was needed immediately.

That forum brought together more than 200 physicians, health care pro-fessionals, and policymakers to discuss the problem. Moderated by John Burress, MD, vice chair of the MMS Committee on Public Health, the program discussed policy and clinical challenges and opportunities in pain management and substance abuse prevention and treatment.

Opioids were also the focus of the Ethics Forum at the MMS Annual Meeting less than a month later, and MMS leaders explored ethical considerations in pain management, including responsible prescribing, the complexity of pain as a clinical issue, and the ethical problems asso-ciated with undertreatment and overtreatment.

A HIGH-WIRE BALANCING ACTTreating a patient for pain in 2015 became a very complicated matter — in many ways like a high-wire balancing act for the state’s physicians, said MMS President Richard S. Pieters, a radiation oncologist at UMass Memorial Medical Center.

But the Society’s physicians — particularly palliative care specialists like Dr. Pieters — were well aware of the thorny balance between a physician’s obligations to the patient and obligations to public health when it comes to prescribing opioids.

When the issue exploded onto the public stage in during his presidency, Pieters said, it became clear that physicians needed to be articulate and passionate advocates for their patients.

“Opioid use is essential in the compassionate care of many patients, particularly those suffering from cancer and terminal illness,” he said. “We must strive to preserve the role of opioids in patient care while directly addressing the impact prescription drugs have on opiate addictions and overdoses.”

As the issue began to dominate news headlines, physicians’ groups across the state and nation began to formulate plans and solutions. Dr. Pieters was asked to join the American Medical Association’s newly formed Task Force to Reduce Prescription Opioid Abuse. MMS Vice President James Gessner, MD, agreed to lead the corresponding Massachusetts effort, the MMS Task Force on Opiate Therapy and Physician Communication.

As the numbers of patients struggling with opioids continued to climb during the spring of 2015, Massachusetts state officials sought out MMS leaders to collaborate with them on solutions.

MMS President Richard S. Pieters, MD

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NO TIME TO WASTEThe directive from Governor Charlie Baker, Attorney General Maura Healey, and the state Department of Public Health was unequivocal: There was no time to waste. Patients across the state, from all walks of life, were dying from opioids, many thousands more were in the grips of addiction as their families suffered.

In collaboration with national addiction pre-vention leaders and experts in pain management, MMS leaders devel-oped a three-pronged campaign to help alleviate the suffering of patients and their families.

In June, MMS launched Smart and Safe, a comprehensive online resource about opioid abuse for patients, physicians, and other prescribers.

Its goal was to promote the safe prescribing, storage, and disposal of opioid medications and to reduce the number of opioid overdoses in Massachu-setts. As part of the effort, the MMS made its continuing medical educa-tion courses on opioids and pain management free to all prescribers. These courses were accessed more than 3,200 times in just a few months. 

A corresponding public education radio campaign, featuring a popular New England football player, advising patients to store and dispose of medications properly, reached an estimated one million listeners each week in late summer and early fall.

Later in the summer, the Board of Registration in Medicine on unan-imously voted to incorporate the MMS’s recently developed Opioid Therapy and Physician Communication Guidelines into its new updated set of prescribing guidelines.

“The MMS has always supported the position that physicians must use their best clinical judgment in the treatment of all patients,” said MMS Vice Pres-ident James Gessner, MD, who was active in developing the new standards. “The guidelines were designed to provide valuable guidance to physicians in their practices and as evidence of best practices and to the Board.”

The time was right for the MMS to take a leadership role in educating physicians of various specialties about pain management and addiction, including developing curriculum, said Barbara Herbert, MD, director of addiction services at Steward Medical Group.

“The Society needed to work on training people to not just treat pain, but also to help patients deal with the complex medical, spiritual, and physical disease which is addiction,” said Dr. Herbert.

Barbara Herbert, MD

MMS Vice President James S. Gessner, MD

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She also believes that more physicians must learn how to intervene earlier in the addiction trajectory. “I compare this to asthma,” said Dr. Herbert. “People who have a bad asthma attack may need to go the ER, but they can avoid the ER if you can figure out they have asthma earlier and pre-scribe an inhaler.”

In early September, the MMS, along with representatives from the state’s four medical schools, met with Governor Charlie Baker and Commis-sioner of Public Health Monica Bharel, MD, to discuss a physician-led approach in developing training and best practices for medical students on pain management and safe opioid prescribing.

Providing medical students and new physicians with additional training on opioids will complement the ongoing effort to provide pain manage-ment CME to all prescribers as new best prescribing practices are devel-oped in the months to come.

EVERY PHYSICIAN HAS A ROLEThe public health challenge of opioid abuse and addiction will be with the medical community for years to come, but the commitment by Massachusetts physicians to make a differ-ence and be part of the solution has already made a difference.

“Many groups have risen to meet the challenge, and physicians have made the commitment to be part of the solution as well,” said MMS President-Elect Dennis M. Dimitri, MD. “As those closest to the patients, as the ones who prescribe their medicines and treat their pain, we can do no less. This is a problem that we needed to address head-on,” he said. “Every physician has a role.”

MMS President-Elect Dennis M. Dimitri, MD

Massachusetts Department of Public Health Commissioner

Monica Bharel, MD

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker

HEALTHY PRACTICES

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Physicians in Massachusetts and nationwide cheered when — after 17 years of frustration and many patches and attempts at reform — Medicare’s flawed Sustainable Growth Rate formula, or SGR, was finally repealed in April 2015.

The SGR repeal legislation passed the House and Senate by overwhelm-ing majorities in April. The approval came just hours before yet another payment patch was set to expire and Medicare would have been forced to cut physician payments by 21 percent.

In the weeks leading to the vote, thousands of physicians from around the country — including several hundred from Massachusetts — par-ticipated in an email campaign urging Congressional lawmakers in both chambers to pass the bill.

The importance of repealing the flawed physician payment formula that has threatened physicians with double-digit reimbursement cuts more than 15 times over the past decade could not be overstated, said MMS President Richard Pieters, MD.

“Change was crucial to re-establishing a stable environment for physicians and more than one million Massachusetts seniors and 70,000 military families who depend on Medicare,” said Dr. Pieters. “The time for short-term remedies was over. Every patch kept the flawed system in place.”

BIPARTISAN VICTORYThe bipartisan victory in Congress for patients and physicians was an enormous relief to Massachusetts physicians, said MMS President-Elect Dennis M. Dimitri, MD.

“We no longer have the threat of 20–30% cuts in payment hanging over our heads. We have finally and completely replaced the flawed SGR formula,” said Dr. Dimitri.

The new Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, or MACRA, calls instead for stabilized payment rates for physicians, with small, yet predictable, increases through 2019.

The new law places physicians on one of two new tracks for Medicare payment beginning in 2019, including a program that incrementally adjusts fees based on scores in clinical quality, meaningful use of electronic health records, efficiency, and practice improvement.

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The new system streamlines several disparate quality reporting programs onto one, reducing confusion for many practices.

MMS officials will be active in the coming months helping members adjust to the new systems, said Alex Calcagno, MMS director of Federal and Community Relations.

“We envision all these programs will be one coordinated system, and its metrics will be meaningful, valid, and scientifically verifiable,” said Ms. Calcagno.

“Going forward, our job is going to be to help our members make the transition and decide what’s best for them and their patients,” she said.

“YOUR VOICES WERE HEARD”The law does provide funding for quality-measure development, at $15 million per year from 2015 to 2019, while physicians are retain their leading role in developing quality standards. In fact, there is call in the legislation for various physician specialty societies to be actively engaged in the development of appropriate metrics.

MACRA also includes other important provisions, including extended funding for the National Health Service Corps, which will help ensure an appropriate future work force of physicians to serve patients in the future.

“We want to thank all the members of the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation who not only voted in favor of the bill, but remained commit-ted over the years to reforming the Medicare payment schedule on behalf of the nation’s seniors, military families, and persons with disabilities,” said Dr. Pieters. “We are equally grateful to the leadership and members on both sides of the aisle that made passage of this landmark law a reality.”

Most of all, Dr. Pieters said, the MMS is grateful to its members who reached out when the advocacy counted the most.

“We also thank the physicians who reached out and contacted their representatives in Congress in advance of this vote,” Dr. Pieters said. “Your voices were heard.”

MMS House of Delegates Annual Meeting 2015, Seaport Boston

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ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS AND MEANINGFUL USEThe practice environment contin-ued to change rapidly this year and present ongoing regulatory challenges to physician practic-es in Massachusetts.

One of the most welcome actions to reduce bur-densome regulations on physician practices came from the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine in late 2014.

After hearing exten-sive evidence and testimony from the state’s physician-leaders, the Board approved a broad set of regulations that allowed physicians more options to comply with a state law that ties a physician’s license to practice medicine to proficiency with electronic health records.

The so-called “meaningful use” regulation — originally written into the state’s landmark 2012 health care cost containment law — had severe un-intended consequences that would have prevented more than half of the state’s physicians from gaining licensure, since the majority of physicians in the state are not eligible for the federal meaningful use requirement. 

In testimony before the Board in September 2014, MMS Vice President James S. Gessner, MD, said if left unchanged, the regulations “would severely affect patient access to care across the Commonwealth.”

The Board ultimately elected to establish multiple ways in which phy-sicians could comply with the law’s requirement and demonstrate and improve their skills, among them completing an accredited continuing medical education course on electronic health records; participating in the Massachusetts Health Information Highway, the state’s official health information exchange; or having a relationship that includes patient care activity with a hospital that has a meaningful use program. 

“The Board’s action not only eased physician concerns about licensure, but preserved access to care for patients,” said Dr. Pieters. “We were grateful for the Board’s reasonable approach to the issue.”

HEALTHY PROFESSION

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The value of organized medicine was front and center in 2015 as phy-sician advocacy proved effective in a number of major issues facing our membership.

The MMS was an active advocate on behalf of the state’s physicians on several major federal regulatory issues, including flawed Medicare payment formulas and onerous Meaningful Use regulations. On the state level, Society leaders worked with Massachusetts lawmakers to craft broad-based opioid addiction prevention efforts, as well as new Massachusetts opioid prescribing guidelines.

For the first time ever, MMS membership topped 25,000 members, and the Society deepened its presence in many important membership categories.

The new member rolls from this year represent the spectrum of Massa-chusetts physicians, including an increase among women members and physicians under 40, and an 11 percent jump among new student mem-bers. These are physicians we hope will be with MMS as active members for many decades to come.

Ellana Stinson, MD, co-vice chair for the Committee on Young Physicians and CYP Delegate to AMA-YPS 2015 Interim Assembly, said the MMS had offered her many opportunities to be involved in state and national gatherings.

“I was motivated to become more involved with MMS so that I can be a more effective leader in my field,” said Dr. Stinson. “Specifically, I was interest-ed in meeting leaders in a wide variety of disciplines and being exposed to mentorship opportunities that are otherwise difficult to find. Although it is challenging to make time for such events, I look forward to commit-tee meetings, which allow me to speak with other young physicians

and learn more about the work they do. These types of experiences add exceptional value to today’s physicians, who strive to be leaders with significant impact on their field of medicine.”

Sanjay Bansal, MD, co-vice chair of the Society’s Committee on Young Physicians, said he became active in MMS after attend-ing a professional development event.

“I like being involved in the MMS be-cause I feel I can make a bigger contribution to medicine beyond my specialty. I think the MMS gives physicians a strong collective voice to help advocate for important health policy, and meet common challenges facing us in our practice,” said Dr. Bansal.

MMS Committee on Young Physicians Co-Vice Chair

Ellana Stinson, MD

MMS Committee on Young Physicians Co-Vice Chair

Sanjay Bansal, MD

Resident and Medical Student Delegates to MMS House of Delegates 2015

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“I enjoyed going to the recent annual AMA conference and felt inspired by so many of my colleagues. I like networking with physicians across specialties, because it helps to give me a fresh perspective on my own clinical practice. I truly feel we are stronger as a group than each of us individually.”

GROWTH IN PHYSICIAN AND RESIDENCY GROUPS STATEWIDE We had more than 168 physician groups enrolled as of late spring, a total of 4,712 members represented.

Among the many new groups who joined us this year were Andover Surgical Associates, Boston ENT Associates, Central Massachusetts IPA, Dowd Medical Associates, Emerson IPA, Internal Medicine Physicians of North Shore, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Anesthesiology, Massachusetts Gastroenterology Association, Massachusetts Managed Care Providers, Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, Massachusetts Society of Eye Physicians and Surgeons, Medical Associates of Greater Boston, SkinCare Physicians, South Shore Medical Center, and Waverley Primary Care.

Residency programs were also a significant area of MMS membership around the state. We currently represent more than 288 resident groups comprised of more 5,430 members.

We were pleased to welcome 21 new residency and fellowship programs in 2015, including Boston Children’s Hospital Adolescent Medicine Fellowship, Boston Children’s Hospital Pediatric Radiology Residency, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Gynecologic Oncology Fellowship, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Pulmonary and Critical Care Residency, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Surgical Oncology Residency, Carney Hospital Family Medicine Residency, Massachusetts General Hospital Advanced General Neurology Residency, Massachusetts General Hospi-tal Movement Disorders Residency, Tufts Medical Center Hand Surgery Fellowship, Tufts Medical Center Child Neurology Fellowship, and UMass Medical Center Radiology Residency.

House of Delegates Members McKinley Glover IV, MD; Jawad Hussain, MD; Eli Freiman; and Gillian Griffith

at the 2015 MMS Annual Meeting

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We continued our sustained commitment and success in supporting the AMA’s recruitment efforts. An initiative to bring student members into organized medicine nationally with membership sponsored by the MMS was incredibly successful, with a 9 percent increase in that catego-ry, bringing our total AMA membership to more than 6,660 members. We have a strong presence at the AMA and very effective delegation from Massachusetts that recently grew again, with an added delegate.

FUTURE OF MEDICINEHelen M. Farrell, MD, a psychiatrist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and instruc-tor at Harvard Medical School, said partic-ipation in organized medicine had been an invaluable professional boost.

“MMS has provided me with a dynamic platform to launch my professional aspira-tions, assume leadership roles, and meet a diverse group of colleagues whom I might not otherwise know,” said Dr. Farrell.

“As a 2015 Delegate for the Young Physicians to the AMA annual meet-ing, MMS provided me with an opportunity to grow my network and participate as an integral member of the AMA. My first experience with MMS was at a workshop for young physicians, which was full of in-spiration and practical advice on everything from growing a business to sound financial investing to balancing life,” said Dr. Farrell. “With ample opportunities for connection, growth, and inspiration, making time in my schedule for MMS is a pleasure. I believe the future of medicine will be transformed by the young physicians, and I am delighted to be a part of it!”

We would like to recognize and thank the Society’s Committee on Member-ship, led by Chair Spiro Spanakis, MD, and Vice Chair Samir Patel, MD.

These increases represent their hard work, along with the efforts of our officers, district leaders, committees, House of Delegates, individual members, and staff to recruit, retain, and satisfy our members.

We are deeply appreciative to all of you who worked so hard this year to help the MMS fulfill its mission to serve the physicians of Massachusetts and their patients.

AMA Delegate Helen M. Farrell, MD

HEALTHY KNOWLEDGE

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This year, NEJM Group launched the first of several innovative and groundbreaking continu-ous learning programs.

NEJM Knowledge+ Internal Medicine Board Review was designed specifically for internal medicine and internal medicine sub-specialists. It includes more than 4,000 ques-tions covering 1,600 learning objectives and a simulated exam environment with two timed two-hour practice exams available via desktop, tablet, and smartphone.

The program offers physicians the opportunity to earn AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ and Maintenance of Certification points toward the American Board of Internal Medicine’s (ABIM) Self-Evaluation of Medical Knowledge (Part 2) requirement with automatic, paperless submission.

“The challenge in improving medical education today is working with increasingly time constrained clinicians,” says Graham McMahon, MD, founding editor of NEJM Knowledge+. “We decided that the best way we could help was to deliver an educational tool that was both effective and efficient.”

NEJM Group partnered with Area9 Learning — a physician-led pioneer in adaptive learning — to create a first-of-its-kind platform with smart technology that adapts to clinicians’ learning goals, pace, and knowledge gaps to deliver the information they need to know.

“The launch of NEJM Knowledge+ Internal Medicine Board Review marks a milestone for NEJM Group as we extend our brands to deliver on our mission of advancing knowledge, learning, and practice to improve patient outcomes,” said NEJM Group Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey M. Drazen, MD.

EXCELLENCE IN A QUESTION BANKFollowing the success of NEJM Knowledge+ Internal Medicine Board Review, NEJM Group added NEJM Knowledge+ Family Medicine Board Review — a prod-uct designed expressly for family medicine physicians, residents, and physician assis-tants — to its growing portfolio of educa-tional products.

The content was written by more than 300 physicians from practices and programs across the country and was subjected to a rig-orous review by professional educators, internal medicine and family medicine generalists, and NEJM Group editors.

Senior NEJM Knowledge+ Reviewer Mark T. Nadeau, MD, MBA, FAAFP, professor of Family and Community Medicine at University of Texas, San Antonio, said that the product helps learners “develop the knowledge base that will help them be successful in the high-stakes test that is the American Board of Family Medicine exam.”

Like Internal Medicine Board Review, NEJM Knowledge+ Family Medicine Board Review includes more than 4,000 questions covering 1,600 key learning points and a simulated exam environment. Family Medi-cine Board Review is also supported in iOS and Android tablets and phones, and features new question search and multidimensional reporting functions.

The product allows learners to focus their study on the two topic areas they will choose on exam day to make up 26 percent of their ABFM board exam. NEJM Knowledge+ keeps its content current and aligned with the standard of care in medicine.

NEJM Group Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey M. Drazen, MD

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Unlike other medical learning solutions, which emphasize reading, study, or lectures leading up to questions and practice exams, NEJM Knowledge+ emphasizes continuous self-assessment with multiple question formats fol-lowed by detailed feedback, a system to help learners retain what they have learned, and sophisticated performance assessments and tracking to help them make the best choices for how to spend their valuable time.

Christie J. Lucente, MS, PA-C, the physician assistant reviewer of the family medicine question bank and a practitioner at Brigham and Wom-en’s Hospital, said, “I’ve tried taking courses, I’ve tried doing book learn-ing, and I’ve tried other online platforms, and there’s nothing that’s as convenient or efficient as NEJM Knowledge+.”

Thousands of clinicians from around the world have already selected NEJM Knowledge+ review programs to help them meet their continu-ous learning needs. The programs have so far been adopted by internal medicine residency programs worldwide, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital, UT Southwestern Medical Center, and Turku University Hospital in Finland.

Reviews from clinicians on the programs have been positive.

“I started using NEJM Knowledge+ and I think it is the best learning system that I have ever used,” said Rob McEachern, MD.

“It is a very innovative method of learning that … keeps track of your learning on different topics and retests you in a strategic manner un-til you are proficient in the area,” said Dr. McEachern. “I could see this type of program as a required part of keeping up in internal medicine, and hopefully, we’ll see similar programs in the subspecialty areas in the future. I think that they are onto something really special!”

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William Reichert, MD, called NEJM Knowledge+ “the best CME experience I have ever been involved with.”

“The relevance to my actual practice is very high,” said Dr. Reichert. “The ability to spend 30 minutes at a time when you have the time is a very time-efficient way to learn.”

Sikander Hayat, MD, described how he learned about NEJM Knowledge+ just three days before his May 2014 exam. “The ABIM questions were very similar to the questions in NEJM Knowledge+, which gave me a lot of practice. I finished my exam in almost half the time, and I got a top score,” said Dr. Hayat. “This product was not only useful for the ABIM exam but also reinforced my already acquired knowledge and provided me with new answers to my daily practice.”

Healthy Communities

Healthy Practices

Healthy Profession

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