by Lacy Sterling, MBA, MOC Coordinator at Nemours Children’s Health
In 2022, Nemours Children’s Health became an American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) Portfolio Program Sponsor after more than a decade as a Pediatric Portfolio Sponsor of the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP)*. Through the latter, we successfully helped hundreds of our pediatricians meet their Maintenance of Certification (MOC)** requirements for quality improvement (QI) projects. While that was beneficial for approximately 52 percent of our physicians (i.e., pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists), it left the rest of our physicians on their own to meet their continuing certification requirements. By becoming an ABMS Portfolio Program™ Sponsor, we are now able to offer activities that meet nearly all our physicians’ QI needs.
Years ago, Nemours Children’s developed the infrastructure for central oversight and management of a successful MOC program to ensure physicians have the resources, foundational QI knowledge, and ability to start and proceed at their own pace with or without colleagues in meaningful QI projects relevant to their practice and patient population. Our MOC team provides guidance and consultation to physicians and evaluates educational activities and QI projects to meet board certification standards. The program also covers submission fees to both save physicians money and streamline participation. This customized approach allows providers to target areas of improvement that are relevant to them, connecting them to a specific purpose that leads to improved patient care and experiences. Further, our team can guide providers to work on projects collaboratively, as well as direct them toward supporting strategic initiatives.
QI project measures are often derived from Nemours Children’s electronic health records, eliminating the need to manually abstract the data, or data collected with other routine reporting measures. The team works to embed continuing certification credit into work already being done, such as linking to enterprise performance improvement activities, recognizing workflow changes during the rollout of clinical pathways, and seamlessly incorporating applications for credit with the institutional review process. QI work is acknowledged during our internal Quality and Research Week, and participation in recognized QI activities counts toward annual physician performance metrics and ongoing professional practice evaluation.
A variety of QI projects encourage cross campus collaboration and are directly aligned to meet strategic goals set forth by the organization. After becoming an ABMS Portfolio Program Sponsor, we noticed an immediate increase of specialists, including anesthesiologists, neurologists, ophthalmologists, and surgeons, participating in such projects. As an example, anesthesiologists participated in an event reporting improvement project, resulting in an increase in the reporting of adverse advents and near misses. Our status epilepticus QI project improved adherence to an enterprise clinical pathway and evidence-based care. We offered continuing certification credit for completing safety course training for pediatricians as part of the ABP Portfolio Program in 2023 and subsequently modified and expanded that opportunity to additional specialties in 2024 as part of the ABMS Portfolio Program.
In addition, our team members have participated in the Portfolio Program Sponsor monthly sessions and attended the annual ABMS Conference, two opportunities for Sponsors to share key learnings. During these events, our program has shared drivers for program success and sustainability related to leadership, infrastructure, communication, and incentives. Our program adopted a return on investment (ROI) model presented by the University of Utah, another Sponsor, to better understand our impact. The MOC program consolidates non-value-added efforts (e.g., administrative tasks, data extraction and management, generation of visual displays, etc.) that physicians would need to individually perform. The ROI revealed that our program saves 30 hours of work per QI project, allowing physicians to spend more time providing patient care. Using a median pediatrician salary and other department participant salaries produced an estimated MOC program ROI of $353,725 in 2024.
Becoming an ABMS Portfolio Program Sponsor has provided immense benefits to our health care providers and has made it easier to submit various ABMS Member Board projects all in one place. Beyond saving our physicians time, money, and paperwork, being an ABMS Portfolio Program Sponsor provides Nemours Children’s physicians assurance that our team is here to assist them in their QI needs, regardless of their specialty.
“Beyond saving our physicians time, money, and paperwork, being an ABMS Portfolio Program Sponsor provides Nemours Children’s physicians assurance that our team is here to assist them in their QI needs, regardless of their specialty.“
*In an effort to reduce the application burden and costs for organizations, ABP developed the Pediatric Portfolio Sponsor Program for organizations that are managing many MOC-approved QI projects.
** To comply with the recommendations of the Continuing Board Certification: Vision for the Future Commission, ABMS Member Boards are discontinuing the use of the term MOC and replacing it with continuing certification as reflected in the Standards for Continuing Certification, effective Jan. 1, 2024.
© 2025 American Board of Medical Specialties
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