New York, NY (December 3, 2015) – Amid calls for reform in the way new doctors are trained, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation today announced the launch of the Macy Regional Conferences on Innovations in GME. In the first half of 2016, Macy will join with leading academic institutions in six locations across the country to engage medical leaders, health professions educators and residents in a forum to showcase innovations and share promising models related to the structure, content and financing of graduate medical education (GME) programs.
Graduate medical education is the training all doctors must complete to become licensed physicians. Despite significant investments in GME—Medicare contributes $9.7 billion and Medicaid about $3.9 billion each year to support teaching hospitals and other training sites that provide residency training—many question whether the current system is producing physicians with the skills and competencies and with the right specialty and geographic distribution to meet contemporary patient needs.
“There is a lot of new energy in the field right now about how to reform and improve today’s GME system, and we want to capitalize on that,” said George Thibault, president of the Macy Foundation. “While changes are necessary at the federal level, the reality is that will take time and we need to move faster. There are a number of GME innovations happening on the ground across the country that we must learn from and share with one another.”
Macy is co-hosting the forums with:
- February 1, 2016: Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN)
- February 17, 2016: MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Texas System (Houston, TX)
- March 30, 2016: University of California, San Francisco (San Francisco, CA)
- March 31, 2016: University of Washington - WWAMI (Spokane, WA)
- May 6, 2016: Partners HealthCare System (Boston, MA)
- May 23, 2016: University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
Each forum will focus on pioneering GME models being developed in that region—from program design and new training sites to payment mechanisms and assessment tools. The goal is to surface opportunities for replicating and scaling up innovations to address problems with GME at the regional as well as national level.
At the culmination of the series, Macy will issue a final report that showcases what was learned and synthesizes key insights.
The series builds on Macy’s past investments into making GME more accountable to the needs of the public. In 2010, the Macy Foundation hosted a conference focused on the regulation, financing, and size of GME. A year later, the Macy Foundation hosted a follow-up conference focused on the content and format of GME. Two reports, Ensuring an Effective Physician Workforce for America and Ensuring an Effective Physician Workforce for the United States, capturing the conclusions and recommendations from these meetings, were issued by the Foundation in 2011. Following those conferences, the Macy Foundation in 2012 along with a number of private and public funders financed an Institute of Medicine (IOM) study of the governance and financing of GME. The IOM’s report, Graduate Medical Education That Meets the Nation’s Health Needs, was released last year. Among the IOM’s recommendations is to encourage innovation in the structure, location and design of GME.
To learn more, visit: http://macyfoundation.org/events/gme-conference-series.
About the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation:
Since 1930, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation has worked to improve health care in the United States. Founded by Kate Macy Ladd in memory of her father, prominent businessman Josiah Macy Jr., the Foundation supports projects that broaden and improve health professional education. It is now the only national foundation solely dedicated to this mission. Visit the Macy Foundation at macyfoundation.org.