Dr. Stobo responds to GME/Navigant question 7/28

Question/Comment: Please clarify #18 on the Navigant recommendations, with reference to limiting total residents to those with outside funded resources.

Response: Recommendation 18 reads: “Limit the total number of residents to those with outside funding sources.”
The only significant external source of funding for graduate medical education (GME) costs is Medicare. However, Medicare has established “caps,” or limits on the number of residents it is willing to fund. For UTMB, the Medicare cap is 497 residents. In 2005, UTMB had 563 residents. We fall short of being fully reimbursed for what it costs us to train our residents. Adding to the direct cost of “extra” resident positions, the university must also support additional faculty to help train and supervise those residents, must treat a proscribed number of patient conditions to provide sufficient clinical experience (many of those patients are unfunded), and incurs additional administrative costs. Navigant estimated that our total unfunded costs associated with GME amounted to $26.4 million, a large amount for UTMB to absorb.
UTMB, through a committee specifically charged to explore this issue, is currently considering the consultant’s recommendation to reduce the number of residents to the Medicare cap, which is what one typically sees at other academic health institutions. The recommendation has not been accepted yet.
Downsizing the number of residents is a complicated and somewhat long-term process that would need to be undertaken carefully and strategically. It would need to be achieved over several years by reducing the number of new residents coming to UTMB rather than reducing the number of residents already here.

http://www.utmb.edu/president/FIP/FAQs.htm

LRN comment: looks like the difference is about 66 slots, which is quite a bit different than the 118 slots currently circulating the rumor mill. Let's hope the downsizing applied to GME is closer to the 66 cap/gap in the MCR funding.