Wales Behavioral Assessment Joins ABMS Portfolio Program to Improve Patient Care and Safety

CHICAGO, Nov. 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Wales Behavioral Assessment (WBA) in Kansas has joined the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) Portfolio Program^TM. This program supports the quality and safety goals of health care organizations across the country by helping engage physicians in quality and practice improvement initiatives by offering continuing certification credit.

WBA offers a range of services for health care providers, including education, consultation, and research. Educational programming focuses on the ABMS core competency areas of interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, practice-based learning and improvement and systems-based practice. WBA fosters and promotes public safety by collaborating with clients to develop skills that improve both personal functioning and professional competence. WBA specializes in addressing professionalism issues with health care providers, offering them the opportunity to gain new behavioral skills that enable them to function in an increasingly complex medical environment, document specific behavioral changes, and maintain their position and privileges in their practice or organization. Offering continuing medical education (CME) courses, including the Program for Distressed Physicians and Continuous Ongoing Professional Education (COPE), the WBA also provides consulting services to organizations, including healthcare institutions, on quality management, organizational functioning, and market strategy.

"Becoming an ABMS Portfolio Program Sponsor will make it easier for us to support health care professionals as they work to improve the quality of the patient care they provide," said Betsy White Williams, PhD, MPH, FSACME, WBA Director of Continuing Education. "We are looking forward to working with the Portfolio Program team to offer providers continuing certification credit opportunities."  

"We are pleased to welcome Wales Behavioral Assessment to the ABMS Portfolio Program," stated ABMS Senior Vice President, Certification Standards and Programs Greg Ogrinc, MD, MS. "Their commitment to helping health care professionals reassess and develop their skills and successfully cope with the current health care climate is needed by both the physician and hospital communities."

The continuing certification programs of ABMS Member Boards and National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants play a vital role in making sure physicians and physician assistants evaluate their current practices, acquire new knowledge and skills, and apply their learnings to the changing health care needs of their patients and the communities they serve. Since the Portfolio Program's inception, more than 4,600 QI activities have been accomplished, with more than 27,000 individual completions. For more information about participation, visit ABMS Portfolio Program.

Established in 1933, the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) is responsible for the creation of standards overseeing physician certification in the United States. Dedicated to improving the quality of care to the patients, families and communities they serve, the 24 ABMS Member Boards develop educational and professional standards and programs of assessment to certify physicians and medical specialists. More than 940,000 physicians and medical specialists are certified by one or more of the ABMS Member Boards in one or more of 40 specialties and 88 subspecialties. For more information about ABMS, visit abms.org or call (312) 436-2600.

SOURCE American Board of Medical Specialties