EVANSTON, Ill. - Jan. 25, 2007 - During the last six months, the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) has been realigning its organization and adding professional staff in order to meet its key strategic initiatives for better educating the public, professional credentialers and physicians about specialty medicine and board certification and for leveraging ABMS’ significant strengths to capture future opportunities for growth.

 “We have conducted a thorough review of our organization focusing on defining our strengths and identifying the best opportunities for ABMS to serve its 24 Member Boards, elevate the importance of certification and value of Maintenance of Certification, grow our certification verification business and advance the work of our Research and Education Foundation,” said Amy A. Mosser, vice-president of ABMS. “As a result, we have developed a solid infrastructure by putting the right people with the right skills in the right positions to execute our initiatives.”

ABMS’ primary strategies involve implementing the Maintenance of Certification program through the ABMS Member Boards, establishing board certification as a major marker of quality for physicians and creating recognition of ABMS as the organization that establishes standards and criteria for certification. Under the new organizational structure, ABMS has focused functional groups, each led by an experienced director. These groups are:

• Information Services – Managed by Jim Jahrling, this group maintains the unified database containing diplomate information from the ABMS Member Boards for timely distribution to consumers, physicians, professional organizations and others.  It is also responsible for supporting and enhancing the computing environment for all internal and external ABMS clients. This group includes talented individuals who focus on information processing systems, data quality programming systems and network infrastructure.
  
  
• Product Management and Business Development – This group, led by Barb Rosenthal is focused on building relationships for ABMS certification verification products and services. The group, which includes a product manager, channel manager and product marketing and support manager, leverages the successes ABMS has had to date as the premier resource for Primary Source data, to further enhance its product offering for licensees, channel partners and custom data requests. This group is also responsible for creating targeted products and services to implement Maintenance of Certification such as the ABMS Patient Safety Improvement Program.
  
  
• Marketing and Communications – Lori Boukas leads this newly created group which manages ABMS’ identity through the development of targeted messaging to consumers, diplomates, payers of all kinds, national quality organizations, government and media. Her team focuses on achieving  broad recognition of the identity, purpose and value of board certification and ABMS as it relates to quality practice by certified physician specialists. Group members specialize in Web site development, meeting and conference planning, publications and communications and key administrative functions.
  
  
• Finance and Administration – Led by Susan O’Connell, this group handles all the accounting and human resources functions for ABMS and the ABMS Research and Education Foundation including accounts payable, receivables, payroll and personnel issues.
  
  
• ABMS Research and Education Foundation – Under the leadership of Rob Nelson, this group supports the scientific, scholarly and public education mission, purposes and goals of ABMS. Members of this group focus on research and educational initiatives regarding certification and Maintenance of Certification.
  
  
• Office of the President – The president and chief executive officer together with the special advisor to the president and executive assistant make up this group which focuses on the daily activities of a busy organization and the execution of all ABMS strategic initiatives for physician certification and maintenance of certification and the development of programs to improve patient safety and practice performance.

About ABMS
The American Board of Medical Specialties is the preeminent medical organization overseeing physician certification in the United States. It assists its 24 Member Boards in their efforts to develop and implement educational and professional standards for the evaluation and certification of physician specialists. ABMS Member Boards provide physician certification information to ABMS for its certification verification service programs. ABMS is recognized by the key healthcare credentialing accreditation entities as a primary equivalent source of board certification data for medical specialists. Visit www.abms.org or call (312) 436-2600.