Introduction
In a recent interview with Providence Business News, Mocingbird revealed its crucial role in modernizing nationwide physician licensing and certification management. Founded by Dr. George Fernaine and Dr. Ian Madom, our Rhode Island-based software company offers a cloud-based platform that simplifies clinician certification compliance, empowering physicians to prioritize patient care over administrative tasks.
Original article published by Providence Business News.
The rise of telemedicine is increasing the demand for doctors to provide care across state borders, and virtual health care allows doctors to reach far-flung and underserved places without being in the same room to provide care.
The barrier stopping doctors from providing care is obtaining licenses to practice in those states, a process that can be long and arduous. The Interstate Medical Licensure Compact Commission, created in 2017, is designed to make it easier by breaking down the cumbersome paperwork of obtaining and maintaining licenses from each state. But now, as the compact continues to spread across the U.S. and work with thousands of doctors – they need some help.
That’s where Rhode Island-based software company My MOC Inc., or Mocingbird, comes in. IMLCC has selected the company to help build, implement and maintain an enhanced physician portal for more than 16,000 doctors in 41 states and territories.
Once completed, the portal will be a single place for doctors to access their licenses, practice information and continuing medical education information needed to keep their certificates up to date.
The IMLCC, in a sense, is creating a “physician’s wallet,” said Marschall Smith, the group’s executive director. The portal will be a one-stop shop for a doctor to obtain, track and execute continuing education, such as opioid or sex trafficking awareness training, to meet the differing state requirements and deadlines.
Mocingbird’s technology will help physicians make sense of it all.
Founded by interventional cardiologist Dr. George Fernaine and orthopedic spine surgeon Dr. Ian Madom, Mocingbird is a cloud-based platform that automates clinician certification compliance. MOC stands for maintenance of certification.
Neither of the doctors, who met while obtaining their MBAs, intended to create a startup, says Madom, co-founder and CEO of Mocingbird. But they wondered if they could do something about managing the ongoing requirements behind doctors’ credentials that are education-based and seemingly always up for renewal.
Madom says that if a doctor loses track, it can be a “steep hill to climb” to meet the requirements before or after the deadline passes.
When the doctors spoke with colleagues, they learned of various disorganized ways physicians keep their credentials, from notes scribbled on a pad to paper copies buried deep in files to folders kept on a desktop or spreadsheets.
“All the doctors would complain about the same thing,” said Fernaine, co-founder and product adviser. “And we realized, ‘Wow, this is a real pain point that exists with everyone.’ ”
So, the doctors set out to build a system to manage these tasks. The goal was to create more time for them to spend with patients or their families and less time taking their valuable time doing administrative work.
“People don’t want to spend their days on software,” Madom added. “They want to get in, get it done and then move on with the rest of their day.”
The process doesn’t have to be difficult, Madom says.
“In all honesty, it’s made my life so much easier,” Fernaine said. “Not only am I an owner, but I am a customer.”
Since the company went operational in 2021, it has doubled the size of its customer base each year, with around 35 medical group practices of various sizes thus far. In addition, the company has grown from about 12 employees less than a year ago to 20.
So, when IMLCC asked for help to make administrative work easier nationwide – a software company doing similar work that was founded by two doctors seemed like the best choice.
The work to create a separate interface from the software developed by Mocingbird kicked off about a month ago. IMLCC hopes to have a system rolled out by the fall of 2024.
Headquartered in Littleton, Colo., the IMLCC is a regulatory compact held by each individual state that allows the sharing of information and data between governmental organizations. (Rhode Island passed legislation to join the compact, but implementation has been delayed, according to the IMLCC.)
Each state already has done the legwork to issue the doctor’s license, resulting in a qualification letter, which the other states use to administer a new license. The streamlined process has significantly reduced the time to obtain a new license from nine months to 30 days.
The process sets a high bar of standards and regulations for the physicians to fit within the hodgepodge of requirements for each state.
Six years ago, the compact averaged about 100 to 150 monthly applications. As of October, it has processed more than 2,000 applications a week. The IMLCC has issued more than 80,000 licenses involving about 16,000 physicians.
“We’ve taken off,” Smith said.
In Massachusetts, legislation for the state to enter the compact is under consideration.
“Talking about the resilience of clinicians is, to me, a waste of time because we’re resilient people,” Madom said. “We burn out because we don’t have systems that take us away from the things that are really undesirable in our jobs like administrative work, which is not why we went into medicine – we went in to take care of people.”
Mocingbird’s and IMLCC’s visions are aligned, Madom says.
“I’m excited and energized to work with another organization that sees the world like us,” Madom said. “Let’s collaborate and make a better system for docs.”
Read the Providence Business News Article here.
About Mocingbird
Mocingbird is a SaaS management platform dedicated to improving medicine and clinician well-being. Our comprehensive solution eliminates the chaos of ongoing credentialing and delivers high-impact Continuing Medical Education (CME). With Mocingbird, individual clinicians gain a convenient one-stop solution to validate, track, document, and calculate their CME requirements for professional license maintenance. Healthcare organizations benefit from a powerful management tool that provides a real-time compliance overview for effective risk mitigation. Founded by Interventional Cardiologist, Dr. George Fernaine, and Orthopedic Spine Surgeon and CEO, Dr. Ian Madom.
