Online Medical Study Buddy
Founded over 10 years ago, Rapid Recert was the brainchild of Dr. Gary Grosel and his partner Dr. Andre Saad, both OB-GYN board-certified physicians who were then managing day-to-day successful medical practices. Their mission was to deliver the highest quality, most comprehensive online recertification resource available to time-constrained OB-GYN physicians who must adequately prepare for the required ABOG Maintenance of Certification (MOC) exam under very tight deadlines.
The Paper Chase
Each year, board-certified OB-GYN doctors are required to pass a Maintenance of Certification (MOC) exam, in order to renew their professional credentials. ABOG develops and distributes the MOC curriculum through a series of 45 densely written, highly detailed, scientific articles that cover evidence-based studies relating to the specialty of Obstetrics and Gynecology. For diplomates in the sixth year of their maintenance certification cycle, an MOC III written examination has been required in the past. Preparation for both examinations is extremely time-consuming and arduous, given the volume of clinical information that must be mastered in such a short time period.
Armed with an intuitive idea to serve a highly specialized need, the partners began by drafting a library of simplified, one to two-page summaries for each of the 45 scientific articles issued annually by ABOG, as well as a compendium of Practice Bulletins and Committee Opinions that the Board has deemed relevant to understand, in order to continue to practice in the specialty. They then built an e-commerce platform through which they could distribute these summaries at scale for a fee to all OB-GYN specialist physicians needing to master the MOC curriculum quickly to pass their recertification exams.
“What makes the model challenging is two-fold: firstly, ABOG doesn’t always follow a predictable calendar when releasing the subject articles required for the MOC exam” says Dr. Gary Grosel, Co-founder and Partner of Rapid Recert. “They’ll release 15 complex scientific articles at once, three times per year, and you never know exactly when. Secondly, these scientific articles are lengthy and densely packed with a lot of facts, one right after the other, which makes it all the more time-consuming to summarize the information in layman’s terms.” Initially, Dr. Grosel and his partner were writing all of the article summaries themselves, which included a 300-page Compendium Review summary study guide for the MOC Part III written examination.
“Physician subscribers to our service continue to perform at a >90% pass rate on the exam, while also saving a lot of preparation time in the process since they can absorb and process the information quickly,” Dr. Grosel states. Though good news for their dynamic small business, both partners were managing busy private practices, which constrained the time they needed to dedicate to writing the summaries in a timely manner and now just edit the summaries prepared by MedComms Experts.
Unique collaborator in medical education
An internet search uncovered three potential medical communications agencies with whom they could outsource the work. Each was put to a rigorous test and the outcome was perhaps surprising. At the time, MedComms Experts had only a single office in Zurich. “We really wanted to hire a New York-based company for reasons of proximity and convenience, but the quality of the writing sample that MedComms Experts submitted was far superior,” Dr. Grosel explained.
MedComms Experts assigned Senior Medical Writer Nathalie Preiswerk to the task. “The fact-driven format of the original articles made it challenging to re-work it for the lay professional,” Nathalie said. “The article needs to have an expert flow to it without shortcutting the breadth and depth of the science. At the same time, it has to be digestible, simplified, and easy to understand for optimal learning and retention.”
Grace under pressure
Timeliness, speed and accuracy are not easy to achieve when work flows are unpredictable. “When 15 articles hit all at once with summaries due in two weeks, MedComms Experts always gets it done.”
Indeed, a near perfect understanding of the scientific specialty must exist to write using a specialist physician’s actual tone of voice. The team at MedComms Experts consistently produces article summaries with remarkable medical accuracy. So well, in fact, that Dr. Grosel has had the agency work on some other projects over the years.
“It is rare to find a medical communications partner that is, at the same time, impeccably organized, as well as agile and flexible. In addition to their seamless writing process, the content quality of the work is nothing short of outstanding; you can tell they have a very solid understanding of science and medicine.”
Best-in-class medical writing
“These guys know what they are doing,” says Grosel. “They are also highly collaborative and cooperative to make the work the best it can be. I will go back and forth editing with Nathalie and Rachel Park day-after-day and there is never any push-back. Revisions are fast and timely. The work comes back better and better each time.”
And surely there will be many more to come.
“I believe MedComms Experts delivered for us some of the best summaries that have ever been done in our sector.”
