The Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME), a federal advisory committee, met on March 4 and 5 to discuss topics for a planned 25th report to Congress, vote on a draft issue brief, and hear updates from federal agencies regarding graduate medical education (GME) initiatives. The topic for the COGME’s 25th report to Congress is team-based care and interprofessional training. The intent of the report is to promote greater adoption of team-based care training and interprofessional training across academic medicine to improve patient outcomes. Council members will work over the coming months to refine the report’s topic areas and formulate specific recommendations to Congress. Periodically, the COGME provides issue briefs shorter than its long-form reports to Congress.
The draft issue brief discussed at this meeting focuses on graduate medical education (GME) data collection and recommends coordination and collaboration among organizations responsible for GME data sources, as well as funding longitudinal GME outcomes research for individual residents. Louis Padilla, MD, Associate Administrator for Health Workforce, provided updates from the Health Resources and Services Administration Bureau of Health Workforce, and John Byrne, DO, Senior Advisor, Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Academic Affiliations, provided updates for the implementation of Section 403 of the Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks Act of 2018 (Pub. L. 115-182). The next planned meeting for the COGME is September 12-13.