On March 16, Ohio Academy of Family Physicians Executive Vice President Ann Spicer attended the physician associations’ quarterly meeting with Ohio Department of Medicaid Director John McCarthy. Director McCarthy provided an update on progress being made relative to revising the way the Ohio Department of Medicaid funds graduate medical education (GME).
The decades-old GME funding distribution formula unevenly distributes funding for resident training and is not distributed in ways that incentivize production of the kinds of physicians that are most needed in Ohio. Under the current formula, the Ohio Department of Medicaid currently subsidizes hospitals $39,000 on average annually for each resident trained. Some hospitals receive as much as $385,000 per resident while other hospitals receive nothing for the residents trained. Needless to say, the revision of the formula has been very difficult as any revision creates winners and losers.
The medical schools, the Ohio Department of Medicaid, and the Ohio Hospital Association have been meeting regularly since the beginning of 2016 to rewrite the GME distribution formula. Initially, they are working to rebase the formula so there aren’t such vast differences in the amounts paid to different institutions for training residents.
Once the rebase is accomplished and a method for phasing in the modifications is agreed to, the group intends to take on the challenge of revising the distribution of GME funding to incentivize the production of the kinds of physicians Ohio needs.
The OAFP will continue to advocate relative to the importance of incentivizing medical schools to produce an adequate primary care workforce.