To Address Urban And Rural Doctor Shortage, U.S. To Pay For 1,000 New Residencies
Below a rule applied by the Facilities for Medicare & Medicaid Providers as a part of the fiscal 2022 … [+]
getty
The Biden administration moved to fund an extra 1,000 doctor residency slots over the subsequent 5 years to “deal with entry to care, workforce shortages in high-need areas.”
The cash will come from Medicare, which supplies medical health insurance for Individuals 65 and older, but additionally funds direct and oblique prices of graduate medical training within the U.S. together with doctors-in-training and residencies, particularly.
Below a rule applied by the Facilities for Medicare & Medicaid Providers as a part of the fiscal 2022 “inpatient prospective payment system,” 1,000 new Medicare-funded doctor residency slots shall be distributed to qualifying hospitals. “There shall be 200 slots per yr over 5 years,” CMS mentioned Friday in an announcement.
“CMS estimates that funding for the extra residency slots, as soon as absolutely phased in, will complete roughly $1.8 billion over the subsequent 10 years,” the company mentioned Friday. “In implementing a piece of the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA), 2021, that is the biggest enhance in Medicare-funded residency slots in over 25 years. Different sections of the CAA being applied additional promote rising coaching in rural areas and rising graduate medical training funds to hospitals assembly sure standards.”
The shortage of funding for residency slots to broaden the pool of physicians within the U.S. has been a problem for greater than 20 years. The Association of American Medical Colleges, which has lengthy complained of a scarcity of funding for physician coaching, earlier this year said the U.S. “might see an estimated scarcity of between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians by 2034, together with shortfalls in each major and specialty care.”
However Congress earlier this yr took steps to deal with the shortage of such cash for doctors-in-training.
“CMS acknowledges the significance of encouraging extra well being professionals to work in rural and underserved areas, and the necessity to prepare and retain physicians to enhance entry to well being care in these communities,” CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said. “The CAA created an amazing alternative for us to deal with well being care inequities, and CMS is grateful to Congress for his or her motion on this essential difficulty.”
