Graduate medical education

Protect federal funding for tomorrow's doctors

Graduate Medical Education (GME) may face cuts in Medicare financing that could limit access to care for patients, jeopardize the ability of residency programs to train physicians, and increase additional physician shortages.

The U.S. is facing a projected shortage of up to 90,000 physicians by 2025, and Medicare currently caps the number of residency training positions it supports. This cap inhibits the establishment of new programs as well as the expansion of existing programs that could train more residents, decrease the physician shortage, and add to America's workforce. 

A healthy nation must maintain access to care for its patients by protecting its valuable physician workforce. In order to address the needs of the future, the AMA continues to urge Congress to maintain current funding for GME, remove the existing cap on residency positions and to support innovative solutions to expand GME.

In working towards a solution, Congress introduced H.R. 1117, the "Creating Access to Residency Education (CARE) Act of 2015 and S. 1148/H.R. 2124, the "Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2015." These legislative solutions adequately address the physician shortage by providing critical additional federal support for residency training that will help to ensure patient access to care.