If you live in Kentucky and have an appointment with an opthalmologist (eye doctor), make sure it’s not Dr. Rand Paul. Yes, that Rand Paul — the Tea Party hero/Kentucky GOP primary winner who is in dire need of messaging management. Turns out it’s not just his advertised critical thinking skills that are lacking. As a doctor, his skills are suspect and his honesty is non-existent.

You may have heard that Dr. Paul has not been board certified for some time. Board certification is a means of testing mastery of the basic knowledge and skills that make up a given medical specialty. For the 26 medical specialties, there are 26 specific certification exams. Only physicians who have passed these exams may claim board certification, just like only those medical students who graduate from medical school may claim to be MDs or DOs. Physicians without board certification may or may not be competent, you just don’t know. But that’s not the issue with the egregious Dr. Paul.

Recently the medical boards decided that physicians should re-test every 7-10 years to ensure continued competency. It was an excellent, patient-centered decision that came on the heels of repeated studies demonstrating a correlation between number of years out of residency and a significant decline in clinical skills. Dr. Paul objects, apparently. Not only did he threaten to “secede” from the American Board of Opthalmology, he allowed his certification to lapse. That’s fine, as long as patients know. Instead, Dr. Paul continued to claim board certification.

What does this mean for patients? It means all the education that goes into helping you determine physician competency, like advice to seek out board-certified physicians, becomes useless without further in-depth homework. Claiming non-existent specialty board certification  is medical fraud, and it can hurt patients. Badly.

So, to beat this kind of harmful farce, head directly to the certification board sites themselves (see below) and check out a potential physician’s credentials. Your safety is worth the extra time. I checked the ABMS website, and Rand Paul is definitely not there. At least Dr. Paul has shown us what the anti-government Tea Party is really all about: lying and hurting others to benefit itself.

American  Board of Medical Specialties website

American Osteopathic Association website

American Board of Physician Specialties website

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