Preventive medicine resident testifies before IOM GME Committee

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Governance and Financing of Graduate Medical Education invited and heard testimony from the preventive medicine perspective at its first meeting in December. Raul Mirza, DO, MPH, vice president of the ACPM Resident Physician Section (RPS) testified on the importance of securing strong support for preventive medicine residency training programs under a reformed graduate medical education (GME) payment methodology.

The IOM Committee has been charged with developing recommendations for policies to improve GME that "consider the current financing and governance structures of GME, the residency pipeline, the geographic distribution of generalist and specialist clinicians; types of training sites; relevant federal statutes and regulations; and the respective roles of safety net providers, community health/teaching health centers, and academic health centers.”

Dr. Mirza noted in his comments that, "as it currently stands, GME financing does not support emerging population-focused training models. Unfortunately, the shortcomings of Medicare’s GME payment methodology has placed PMR training programs at a financial disadvantage compared to all other residency training disciplines…The single, most-often cited reason by program directors for their inability to train at full capacity is lack of a stable, federal funding source to support residency training costs.”

Previously, following the initial organization of the IOM Committee, ACPM president Miriam Alexander, MD, MPH, FACPM sent a letter informing committee members of the unique pressures that adversely impact the preventive medicine training pipeline.

For more information about the IOM Committee visithttp://bit.ly/HMpyZf.