Has anyone ever challenged the NCCPA?

[TWR]

Wondering if anyone or group has ever sued or challenged the NCCPA about using a written test to maintain the "C" in order to keep their job?  What percent fail the PANRE ?  Also it is a fact that as we get older, it becomes harder to pass written tests.  I do believe in certification but maybe  just 100 hours or more of CME should be sufficient in order to maintain the "C" ?  Works for the NP's.  Maybe their certifying company could do ours??  Just a thought.

[surgblumm]

There are too many PAs who are considered excellent and were leaders in the professions health care and after 35-40 years discover they cannot pass PANRE.  They have years of experience and have been evaluated by their physicians and hospitals but still cannot get past a test that is made for the new PAs of the past six years. How can we take a "third look" at this subject? Why are professionals being forced out of employment because of the certification issue? Someone needs to advocate for the first two generations of PAs.

[sas5814]

Good luck. They have all kinds of disingenuous crap they tout. You don't have to take the test. States decide whether the test is mandatory not us. Insurance companies decide whether they require the test not us.

The problem is they spend millions of OUR dollars lobbying state medical boards, insurers, and legislators. They are so dishonest about it my blood boils.

They don't care about you or our generation of PAs. They care about $$$$. 

They have a closed system where the current board chooses new board members so nobody will ever get a seat who disagrees. They also answer to nobody and have our profession by the throat.

AAPA should have started another certifying agency when they threatened to.

 

I don't know if "challenge" is the right word but I have been riding them like a rented mule for several years. Despite all my efforts nothing has really changed. They slapped a little lipstick on the pig and changed the recert again but missed the central issue.......no high stakes testing.

Edited March 22, 2022 by sas5814

[CAAdmission]

5 hours ago, sas5814 said:

Good luck. They have all kinds of disingenuous crap they tout. You don't have to take the test.

That's pretty much it. You take the test of your own free will. 

Sort of like how ARC-PA says accreditation is a "voluntary process."

[iconic]

They did come out with alternative to PANRE?

[rev ronin]

19 minutes ago, iconic said:

They did come out with alternative to PANRE?

Yeah, online.  I did the pilot.  It's smaller chunks, timed, open everything, and reasonably reasonable, but about 2-5% of their questions were downright wrong, one ridiculously egregiously so.

[TWR]

Once again, my issue is with a written test being used to evalute if we have a career or don't.  States that don't require it doesn't mean squat.  Hospitals and corporate medicine do require it!  Again, just do away with the written part of keeping our certification.  Bob Blumm's response says it all!  The NCCPA should be sued for making a written test define who we are!  Period!

[surgblumm]

We are the folks who have given birth to this organization and concept but the reality is, that we can change this if we choose. Our approach to disease changes almost every morning if we are well informed and we change with those guidelines. The AAPA as our representative organization. need to place this on the front burner and not allow other action items to stand in the way of the more important ones. This is why we are "marking time" as a profession.

[True Anomaly]

The window to change it has passed for now- we did have an opportunity a few years ago, and it did get hotly debated around the profession including during a House of Delegates meeting with resolutions to start a new certifying body through AAPA….but I think with trying to pass OTP and then the name-change issue sometimes it just becomes financially unfeasible to do it all at once

[TWR]

I would direct your attention to the Rand Report that was commissioned by AAPA several years ago to read. IT was quite an eye opener.  It was ordered to address the issues that PA's have with the exam from NCCPA.  I don't know why it wasn't followed up.

[sas5814]

Its existence was acknowledged by the NCCPA and disregarded. I had a fairly specific conversation with their leadership about it last year.

Its a bit like a cult. It is operated by true believers.

[iconic]

I would say that NCCPA is more of a cartel extorting money from hard-working PAs

[rev ronin]

54 minutes ago, iconic said:

I would say that NCCPA is more of a cartel extorting money from hard-working PAs

They get more money each year than AAPA does. They bill themselves as an 'employer of excellence' which basically means your money is going to fund medical plans for their employees that cover day spas.

[TWR]

With all this negativity about the NCCPA (frankly i haver seen a single positive comment about them)  why doesn't someone see about get another credentialing service for us?  I would gladly help or brain storm with anyone.

[rev ronin]

7 minutes ago, TWR said:

With all this negativity about the NCCPA (frankly i haver seen a single positive comment about them)  why doesn't someone see about get another credentialing service for us?  I would gladly help or brain storm with anyone.

True Anomaly referenced the AAPA making tentative steps in that direction, but we have other fish to fry. While the NCCPA is an enemy of the PA profession, it is a parasitic one: it needs us to stay alive so they can continue extracting our wealth to benefit themselves.  As long as they don't get "too onerous" or "too greedy" then AAPA political capital will not be directed at freeing our profession from their yoke.

NCCPA could change themselves from an enemy to an ally in two simple steps:

1) No non-currently-practicing PAs are allowed voting membership on their board.

2) All board seats are democratically elected by currently active certified PAs.

That's it. That's all it takes to reform them.  It won't happen, because NCCPA enjoys propagating the fiction that it protects the public, when there exists no evidence it does any such thing.  It does a great job of limiting the profession to exclude those with test anxiety, but I'm pretty sure that's not one of its stated goals.

[sas5814]

46 minutes ago, TWR said:

With all this negativity about the NCCPA (frankly i haver seen a single positive comment about them)  why doesn't someone see about get another credentialing service for us?  I would gladly help or brain storm with anyone.

It would be a massive undertaking. I have thought about this from time to time.

First you have to have the money to make it happen. I have no idea how much to get started but in my imagination I use the figure 3 million.

The you have to create and build the organization which includes developing all the policies and procedures and, if some kind of testing is in the plan, the tests and how they would be administered and remediated. The over reaching goal would be to eliminate high stakes testing while still providing a credible certification process.

Then the real hard part comes. You have to convince medical boards, insurers, regulators and PAs to buy into your process. It would take years and years.

In my opinion the only way it would work is to have a full time staff that spent all their time trying to get it adopted buy all the states and insurers and every other stakeholder. It would probably be necessary to get some of the "pillars" to buy in which would be a whole different mountain to climb.

Once it began to get credibility people would abandon the NCCPA in droves and it would self sustain.

So.... who has a few million and 5 years to make it happen?

[MediMike]

And what would we replace it with? We can all talk about simply doing CME but everyone here knows that you can just buy Cat 1 credits without actually learning anything.

You want specialty specific exams then you lose the ability to change fields. We hashed this out in another thread recently.

The longitudinal exam process makes the most sense to objectively assess knowledge. I know some folks have test anxiety and that's unfortunate, there are methods and techniques to help manage that anxiety, hell there are medications.

Out of curiosity, is there some quantitative data showing is losing a significant number of clinicians due to failure of the PANRE?

[sas5814]

8 minutes ago, MediMike said:

And what would we replace it with?

I think testing would be the way to go but, rather than failing, remediation in areas that need improvement, then retest. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It would take a lot of planning to try to develop a plan that meets everyone's needs. It is simply madness to believe there is a single test that credibly demonstrates competence when we are scattered across the depth and breadth of health care.

Again it would take time to develop but I could imagine creating testing for 5 or 6 of the most common disciplines and then growing from there. There would be mistakes made and adaptations necessary but it would be a constantly evolving process.

[TWR]

How do NP's maintain their certification once they take their version of PANCE?

[Hope2PA]

34 minutes ago, TWR said:

How do NP's maintain their certification once they take their version of PANCE?

Depends on the state. Few I am familiar with, FPA states for NP, require anywhere from 48-60 every two years. No additional testing beyond initial unless you don’t practice or work for 5 years. As long as you work part time, it’s okay.

Not me testing, but that is one thing that impressed me about PAs. You at least have to keep up with medical knowledge. I personally think, just for family med at least, that every PA, NP and PCphysician should take same exam to work. Specialties different, not sure what would be best for them. But the quality of some primary care providers knowledge is just sad.

[ventana]

Gasp. Usmle step 3.  

[ohiovolffemtp]

The key difference is that PA's are unique in the requirement to repeat a high stakes exam to keep LICENSURE.  That's the unique hold that NCCPA has over PA's: the fact that in the laws of most of the 50 states you have to maintain NCCPA certification, which in turn requires periodic PANRE's, to be able to renew your license, which is required to work.  It is NOT the same as physicians maintaining board certification, which often does require periodic exams.  Physicians can maintain their licenses and ability to work based on completing state required CME's without exams, so can NP's.  Some hospital systems and some payers require physicians to maintain board certification, but many do not.  For example, the level III trauma center where I started required their EM docs to obtain board certification and renew it once.  After that they did not have to maintain board certification and some, including the medical director, did not.

Scott is exactly right: given NCCPA's financial resources and body of requirements embedded in state laws, it would be long and costly to get this changed.

I believe our $'s and political capital are better spent on improvements in scope of practice issues at the state level.

[CAAdmission]

I'm reading this with interest. Clearly no one here has dealt with ARC-PA. They make NCCPA look like angels. 

Edited March 27, 2022 by CAAdmission

[sas5814]

I have. They are the same only different. However no PA ever lost their ability to earn because of ARC-PA.

[MediMike]

16 hours ago, sas5814 said:

I have. They are the same only different. However no PA ever lost their ability to earn because of ARC-PA.

Did they lose their ability to earn because of the NCCPA or because they weren't able to pass an exam that they knew was coming and required of their profession?

It's a bit of devil's advocacy but we all know what we have to do to maintain licensure. Read a book, take a class, pay a tutor whatever it is you need to do

And what are y'all doing messing with the ARC?!

Edited March 25, 2022 by MediMike
Added question