ABIM News Release (06/16/25)

Patients treated by physicians who scored higher on the American Board of Internal Medicine's (ABIM) Longitudinal Knowledge Assessment (LKA) had lower rates of 7-day mortality and readmission, a recent study shows. Using data from more than 4,000 hospitalists who participated in the LKA in 2022 and 2023, the researchers specifically looked at data for more than 260,000 hospitalizations of Medicare fee-for-service patients older than age 65 years. The study compared scores from the physicians' first year of participation in the LKA with the outcomes of patients seen in the 2 previous years, focusing on 7-day mortality and readmissions. For physicians in the top quartile of LKA scores had an 8% lower 7-day mortality rate compared with those in the lowest quartile, a difference of 4.1 deaths per 1,000 hospitalizations. Additionally, patients treated by the top quartile of physicians had a 5% lower 7-day readmission rate compared with those treated by the lowest quartile. “Our results underscore the validity of the continuous knowledge assessment performance feedback as a signal of care quality in terms of outcomes that patients care about,” said Bradley M. Gray, PhD, corresponding author, and Principal Health Services Researcher at ABIM. The research was published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

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