Assessing the Value of Pediatric Graduate Medical Education in Meeting State and National Needs
Product type: policy brief from Carolina Health Workforce Research Center project “Investment in Graduate Medical Education Outcomes: An Analysis of Pediatric GME at the Residency Program Level.
Authors: Thomas C. Ricketts, Erin P. Fraher, Ryan Kandrack
Objectives: To assess the value of pediatric graduate medical education (GME) programs in producing the workforce needed at the state and national level.
Data/Setting: Physicians identified as graduating from an ACGME-approved general pediatrics residency training program in the United States.
Design/Methods: Cross-sectional analysis examining the practice characteristics in 2016 of physicians who graduated from pediatric residency training programs on or before 2005. Analyses used the 2005 and 2016 American Medical Association Masterfiles, the 2017 Area Health Resources File (HRSA) and residency data from the ACGME.
Results: On average across programs, more than half of pediatricians moved from their state of residency but retention varied by state/territory (range 7.6% to 71.2%) and training program (range 4.4% to 93.0%). There was also variation across programs in the tendency of graduates to remain in general pediatrics (range 46.2% to 96.8%) and practice in a non-metro location (range 1.6% to 14.0%) or HPSA (range 2.3% to 10.6%).
Conclusions: Workforce outcomes vary significantly by training program. Future research could combine data in this analysis with Children’s Hospital GME (CHGME) data reported to HRSA to further develop and refine metrics for evaluating program outcomes.