a blog that is for all kinds of issues related to medicine, including medical questions, the practice of medicine, health care delivery and health care reform. This is written as if I were a member of the family and you came to me for advice. I am a Professor of Family Medicine (now retired from University job) and I have lots of experience with this, I am the only doctor in my family.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Call or Write Congress
There is a critical need to change the way we fund graduate (resident) medical education in this country - we need more primary care and fewer specialists. Not all hospitals or health systems are behind this - its not a money maker. Please see Hope Wittenberg's information below:
Ask your representative to co-sponsor our GME pilot bill (H.R. 3667)
Ask your representative to co-sponsor H.R. 3667
Take Action!
Support family medicine's GME Pilot
On December 14, Representative McMorris-Rodgers of Washington and Representative Thompson of California introduced the Primary Care Workforce Access Improvement Act of 2011 (H.R. 3667). The bill's introduction is the culmination of family medicine's efforts over the last three years to introduce reforms in the way Medicare funds graduate medical education. This bill is a budget-neutral way to test new models for the delivery of GME funding - the funding for the training of primary care physicians, particularly family physicians, will take a different path from traditional hospital GME payments. The pilot project introduced by this bill changes the stream of GME funding to make it directly available to medical education entities whose priority is training the primary care workforce. It provides a valuable opportunity to explore modern training techniques that could be useful for the production of the type of primary care physician needed now and for the future and allows for an increase in the number of primary care physicians.
It is of critical importance that you contact your representative on behalf of your program or department and ask him or her to cosponsor this bill. Enter your zip code in the "call now" box above to receive talking points and information on who to contact, as well as links to FAQs and background information
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