ABVS Survey Shows Support for Independent Board

Deloitte and Touche, mailed a questionnaire to 3150 vascular surgeons; 1549 (49%) completed responses were received.

As illustrated in Figure 1, 76% voted for an independent American Board of Vascular Surgery.  Members of the Program Directors in Vascular Surgery (APDVS) voted 77% in favor of the goal of independence. 79% of the members of the Society for Clinical Vascular Surgery (SCVS) voted affirmatively.  Of the respondents with less than 10 years of vascular surgical practice, 87% voted in favor of independence.

Figure 1. Should the American Board of Vascular Surgery continue to pursue its application with the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) for an approved independent board?

 

 

 This support for an independent Board has grown over time as illustrated in Figure 2. 

Figure 2.  Support for an independent Board - the results of four surveys.  The first was the survey done among the attendees to the S. Crawford Critical Issues in Toronto 2000, second the poll conducted by Deloitte and Touche among members of the two national vascular societies (2000), third was the vote taken at the annual business meeting of the two national societies in Baltimore 2001 and fourth the recent poll commissioned to Deloitte and Touche in 2004.

 

 

From the recent survey, there was also support for the following:

Seventy-three percent (73%) of vascular surgeons recommended that the ABVS lobby their vascular surgical colleagues on the American Board of Surgery (ABS) to support independence for Vascular Surgery, despite the Primary Certificate proposal.

61% supported a “Primary Certificate” as recommended by the Society for Vascular Surgery and the ABS.  The ABVS also supports the “primary certificate” because this initiative reinforces its position that Vascular Surgery has evolved into a separate and distinct specialty from General Surgery.

Of those respondents that favored the “primary certificate” initiative, 64% saw it as a way-station to independence.  Note that the question “If you do support a Primary Certificate in Vascular Surgery, should it be regarded only as a way-station to an independent American Board of Vascular Surgery?” may have been ambiguous to some of the respondents since 21% did not express an opinion.

The Directors of the American Board of Vascular Surgery interpret these results as a mandate from the membership of the principal national societies to pursue independence for Vascular Surgery.  The ABVS is preparing its appeal to last year’s decision by the Liaison Committee on Specialty Boards (LCSB), American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) against independence.