Medical-Education-Industrial Complex?

According to Relman, the “medical-industrial complex” is “…a large and growing network of private corporations engaged in the business of supplying health-care services to patients for profit – services heretofore provided by nonprofit institutions or individual practitioners” [1] (p 963). Interestingly, and perhaps most importantly, although the purpose of such examinations for doctors in and out of training are deemed necessary for safety and quality assurance, there is currently no proven correlation between test scores and clinical performance. The numbers for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) are similarly noteworthy. [...]it seems that the ABPN net profit was $7.7 million in 2013 (based on data in Drolet and Tandon [2]). For our specialty, the ABPN has 30 committees (in addition to the board of directors) for different subspecialties, staff, and members who travel to various educational meetings to report on ABPN activities (these could be available online) and programs that bestow financial awards (grants) to senior educators ($200,000/year). [...]we have a registered (quasi) not-for-profit organization with an interesting distribution of profits.