Association between the American Board of Internal Medicine's General Internist's Maintenance of Certification Requirement and Mammography Screening for Medicare Beneficiaries.

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is a leading cause of death in the United States. Continuing medical education programs such as the American Board of Internal Medicine's Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program can increase early detection of cancers by educating physicians about the benefits of screening. Did the imposition of American Board of Internal Medicine's MOC requirement affect guideline-compliant mammography screening?

METHOD: To address this question, we took advantage of a natural experiment that occurred when one group of general internists was required to complete MOC by 2001 because they initially certified in 1991 (MOC required) and another group was grandfathered out of this requirement because they initially certified in 1989 (MOC grandfathers). To measure associations with the MOC requirement, we compared mammography screening in the 2 years before and the 3 years after the 2001 MOC requirement among beneficiaries treated by the MOC-required physicians and compared this difference with the same difference in mammography screening among a control group of beneficiaries treated by the MOC-grandfathered physicians.

RESULTS: We found that the MOC requirement was associated with a regression adjusted 2.8% increase (p < .001) in annual screening and 1.7% increase (p < .001) in biennial screening. When we limited the sample to beneficiaries with no screening at baseline (1999 and 2000), these figures increased to 8.5% (p = .02) and 6.4% (p = .01), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS: The MOC requirement was associated with an improvement in guideline-compliant mammography screening with the most pronounced improvements among women who were the least adherent at baseline and therefore might have benefited the most from screening.