Results From The 2015 GME Matches: GME Positions Continue To Grow
Recently the preliminary results from the 2015 National Resident Matching Program® (NRMP®) and the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) Match were released. While final Match data from the NRMP will be released later this spring, the preliminary results from both programs provide important insights on Graduate Medical Education (GME) trends of interest in the policy community. Three issues are of particular interest in the policy community:
Are GME positions continuing to grow? While many people thought that GME positions would not increase after the Medicare program capped the number of positions the program would p...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - May 1, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Edward Salsberg Tags: Featured Health Professionals AOA GME Graduate medical education Match Day matching programs NRMP Physicians Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Teaching Health Centers: Targeted Expansion For Immediate GME Reform
We describe examples of current or proposed programs which illustrate the potential of these modifications.
Need for Immediate Targeted GME Expansion in Primary Care
There is broad agreement on the need for adequate numbers of physicians prepared to work in primary care, geriatrics and psychiatry in urban and rural underserved areas. A 12,000-31,000 shortage over current primary care physician supply in the next ten years is anticipated, depending on modeling considerations such as physician retirement rates and entrance of advanced practice nurses to take up some of the duties physicians currently perform. Regional and st...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - April 24, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Richard Rieselbach Tags: Costs and Spending Health Policy Lab Health Professionals Organization and Delivery Graduate medical education teaching health centers THCGME Source Type: blogs
The Council On Graduate Medical Education (COGME)—Not Yet Ready For End-Of-Life Care
The objectives of COGME have been to assess physician workforce needs on a long-term basis, recommending appropriate Federal and private sector efforts necessary to address these needs, and to provide a forum to enable appropriate configuration of these needs.
COGME’s duties in pursuing these objectives involve making policy recommendations to the Secretary of HHS, the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions of the Senate, and the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives with respect to:
the supply, and distribution of physicians in the United States,
current and future shortages or ex...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - December 4, 2014 Category: Health Management Authors: Richard Rieselbach, David Sundwall, and Kenneth Shine Tags: All Categories Medicaid Medicare Physicians Policy Politics Reform Workforce Source Type: blogs
Teaching Health Centers: An Attainable, Near-Term Pathway To Expand Graduate Medical Education
We describe a near-term and attainable pathway to expand GME that could gain consensus among these stakeholders. This approach would sustain and expand Teaching Health Centers (THCs), a recent initiative that directly funds community-based GME sponsoring institutions to train residents in primary care specialties, dentistry and psychiatry. We further propose selectively expanding GME to meet primary care and other demonstrable specialty needs within communities, and building in evaluations to measure effectiveness of innovative training models.
Our proposal includes:
Congressional reauthorization and funding of the THC GM...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - October 17, 2014 Category: Health Management Authors: Richard Rieselbach, Paul Rockey, Thomas Nasca, Kathleen Klink, Robert Phillips, Malcolm Cox, David Sundwall, John Frohna, and Katherine Neuhausen Tags: All Categories Disparities Health Care Costs Health Reform Hospitals Medicaid Medicare Physicians Policy Politics Primary Care Veterans Workforce Source Type: blogs
Physician Payments Sunshine Act: Organizations Respond to CMS
September 2nd marked the last day for comments on CMS’ proposed rule to eliminate the accredited continuing medical education (CME) exemption from Sunshine Act reporting. In an overwhelming display of support for the exemption, over 800 comments were submitted encouraging the agency to either maintain or expand the current exclusion.
-Total comments supporting maintenance or expansion of the CME exemption: 820
-Total comments supporting elimination of the CME exemption: approximately 20
-Percentage of comments supporting the CME exemption: 98%
We have followed this issue closely, and recentl...
Source: Policy and Medicine - September 8, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
MDs in Missouri say, "Show me."
Here's a fascinating story in Governing about Missouri's approach to alleviating a physician shortage in rural areas. (Thanks to the folks at Commonwealth Magazine for the tip in one of their daily newsletters.) The lede:A new Missouri law allows recent medical school graduates to practice primary care in underserved areas without completing a residency in a teaching hospital.The Missouri State Medical Association, the law’s chief backer, is calling it an unprecedented effort to help deal with doctor shortages in rural and other underserved areas, but opponents raise questions about whether circumventing...
Source: Running a hospital - July 27, 2014 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
ACGME Turns Blind Eye Toward Issue of Physician Debt
"A new roadmap for improving residents’ professional skills was released Tuesday by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)" begins the press release.
As I dove into this announcement a bit further, I discovered the origins of this initiative outlined in this executive summary (pdf) published by the ACGME on the "CLER Program:"
The Accreditation Council for Graduate (Source: Dr. Wes)
Source: Dr. Wes - January 30, 2014 Category: Cardiology Authors: Westby G. Fisher, MD Tags: ACGME Source Type: blogs
Interview with Docphin Co-founder, Mitesh Patel
Anyone who’s had the experience of wading through databases of medical research papers has likely asked herself, “Isn’t there a better way?” That’s what Mitesh Patel and his team at Docphin thought of when they created their tool, hailed by TechCrunch as the “Bloomberg for Doctors.” A physician entrepreneur who’s also serving as a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar, Mitesh took time out of his schedule to answer a few of our questions about Docphin.
Shiv Gaglani, Medgadget: What exactly is Docphin and what is its value proposition?
Mitesh Patel: It’s been estimated that a signifi...
Source: Medgadget - December 19, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Shiv Gaglani Tags: Medgadget Exclusive Source Type: blogs
Getting sleep versus staying engaged with the patient
Lisa Rosenbaum has posted a thoughtful piece over at The New Yorker entitled "Why Doesn't Medical Care Get Better When Doctors Rest More?" After introducing a story about a patient, she says,A few days later, the resident caring for the patient neared the teaching hospital’s witching hour: whether or not his work was done, he had to leave at 6 P.M. That’s because, a decade ago, largely in response to widespread concerns that tired residents were making too many errors, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education enacted nationwide rules that limited the number of consecutive hours residents ca...
Source: Running a hospital - August 26, 2013 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Medical residents taking the lead on quality improvement
A note from my friends and colleagues at the Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR): Although medical residents are often the first line of contact for most patients in academic medical centers and teaching hospitals, medical residency offers little in the way of formal training on skills needed to keep patients safe from medical errors or on how to deliver high-quality, cost-effective care.To cope with the pressures of today’s health system and new rules requiring clinically competency in patient safety, the national organization representing 13,000 of the nation’s interns and residents is launching th...
Source: Running a hospital - August 22, 2013 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Weekly Roundup – July 12, 2013
The fallout from the Administration’s decision to delay the large employer mandate continued this week, both sides of the aisle have provided their commentary and rationale for why it is or isn’t a good thing. As could have been expected this decision spurred conversation over whether or not the individual mandate should also be delayed, the New York Times has more on this. This has undoubtedly consumed this week’s healthcare news coverage, but for your viewing pleasure below are a couple of other stories that might be of interest.
The Washington Post ran a feature on the risks of loud hospital alarms to patien...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - July 12, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Roundup Kaiser Health News new york times USA Today Wall Street Journal Washington Post Source Type: blogs
ACCME Issues Compliance Reminders
In its monthly newsletter, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) noted that it is currently reviewing data submitted by ACCME-accredited providers through the Program and Activity Reporting System (PARS).
Compliance Reminders from Recent Accreditation Reviews
When the ACCME conducts accreditation reviews, it seeks to identify recurring issues to bring to the accredited provider community's attention for correction. Consequently, the ACCME used the following examples and resources for CME providers
Commercial interest definition: The ACCME expanded the definition of commercial in...
Source: Policy and Medicine - July 12, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
Can protected naptimes reduce medical errors?
Protected naptime is a luxury usually reserved for the under-five-year-old set. Might it also be a tool to combat our country’s astoundingly high rates of medical errors?Trainee fatigue has been a major focus of patient safety efforts since the mid 1980′s, after 18-year-old Libby Zion died tragically from a drug interaction that may have been precipitated by residents working long hours. In 2003, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) required all residents to work no more than 80 hours a week. In 2009, a Congressionally-mandated report from the Institute of Medicine called for interns...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - January 30, 2013 Category: Family Physicians Tags: Physician Hospital Residency Source Type: blogs
