The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today the distribution of 400 new Medicare-supported graduate medical education (GME) positions. These positions were created under Section 126 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (CAA, 2021) and Section 4122 of the CAA, 2023. The 400 additional residency positions are intended to help grow the physician workforce and address the physician shortage by giving more medical graduates the opportunity to complete residency training. CMS identified that approximately 62% of the newly awarded positions will go to primary care and psychiatry residency programs.
“These additional residency positions demonstrate bipartisan support for continued investment in physician training and are instrumental to increasing access to care for patients by allowing more residents to serve communities nationwide,” said AAMC President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD. “Although there is still a lot of work to be done to help alleviate the persistent physician shortage in this country, today is another very meaningful step forward.”
The AAMC projects that the United States will face a shortfall of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036. Demographic factors, specifically a growing and aging population and an aging physician workforce, continue to drive a persistent shortage of doctors and impede access to health care for patients.
Since the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 placed a cap on the number of Medicare-supported residency positions at each teaching hospital, Congress has provided two expansions of Medicare-supported GME in 2021 and 2023. In 2022, CMS announced the initial distribution of the new Medicare-supported residency position awards and has distributed additional positions each year since. This is the fourth distribution of positions provided by the CAA, 2021 and the first and only by the CAA, 2023. To date, CMS has awarded more than half of the 1,200 total positions made available by Congress. Overall, 135 hospitals in 37 states received new residency positions.
“Today’s announcement marks a critical milestone in enabling academic health systems and teaching hospitals to continue providing top-quality patient care,” said Jonathan Jaffery, MD, AAMC chief health care officer. “Academic health systems are already incurring a significant financial burden by choosing to train a portion of their medical residents without federal support. This new round of residency positions will allow them to continue investing in physician training to the benefit of patients nationwide.”
An increase in the number of Medicare-supported GME positions enables health systems across the country to increase the number of physicians they currently train, expanding the physician workforce. The AAMC applauds efforts by both Congress and CMS to address the physician workforce shortage through this distribution.
“We’re thrilled that the hard work of our AAMC members, our partners in the GME Advocacy Coalition, and bipartisan Congressional champions continues to produce results through the distribution of these critical Medicare-supported GME positions,” said AAMC Chief Public Policy Officer Danielle Turnipseed, JD, MHSA, MPP. “Providing additional medical residency positions is a pivotal step toward helping to alleviate the national physician shortage and chip away at the cap on slots that has been in effect for almost 30 years. While we are grateful to CMS for the record-number of additional positions, we will continue advocating for more residency positions to help ensure the country has the physicians necessary to meet the growing and ever-changing health care needs of all patients in all communities.”
The AAMC urges Congress to build on the historic investments already made through CAA, 2021 and 2023 by passing the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2025 (H.R. 4731/ S. 2439). This bipartisan legislation would gradually increase the number of Medicare supported GME positions, enabling critical progress toward growing a sustainable physician workforce to meet the nation’s patient care needs.