Mr. President, today I introduce the Graduate Medical Education Reform Act of 2010 along with my colleague Senator Whitehouse.
During my tenure in Congress, I have worked to ensure that medical schools and teaching hospitals have adequate resources to train the next generation of doctors. I have championed legislation to improve the financing of GME payments to teaching hospitals and annually spearhead efforts to increase grant funding for health professions programs through the appropriations process. In addition, the new health insurance reform law contains an entire title of workforce provisions, many of which I helped to write. The consistent goal of these efforts has been to support our future health care workforce and improve the care that patients receive. The GME Reform Act is an extension of those efforts.
The legislation challenges recent statements by some experts that Medicare overpays teaching hospitals to train medical residents by increasing federal oversight of medical residency programs. For most teaching hospitals, which incur higher costs than other hospitals, this funding is essential to support residency programs and provide high-quality patient care. In addition, now is not the time to starve these important programs of the funding necessary to train our future health care workforce since 30 million more Americans will gain access to health insurance in 2014.
First, the legislation would enhance GME payment transparency. New information about the amount of GME funding that teaching hospitals receive respective to the costs to remain operational would demonstrate that more could be done to support these important programs.
The GME Reform Act would also ensure that teaching hospitals and residency programs spend GME funding to train residents in new models of care and updated technology. Some medical residents, including those in my state, are already trained in these areas, but that is not the case in programs throughout the country. This legislation would encourage reform in every program by linking three percent of indirect medical education payments to teaching hospitals to the performance of residency programs. Medical colleges, accrediting bodies, and other stakeholders that are most familiar with how to train residents would set the specific performance measures. This new oversight would help to break down the silos in medicine and ensure that physicians work together to provide patients with comprehensive health care.
These are important and sensible reforms. As I said, many programs throughout the country have already acted in this manner. But, since it is often most effective to have a reasonable balance of oversight and incentives, this legislation would provide a bonus payment to programs that train at least one-third of all residents in primary care.
In addition, this legislation would transform the way that children's hospitals receive payments for training the future health care workforce by taking those payments out of the discretionary appropriations process and providing mandatory, stable funding every year through a new trust fund.It would also extend residency training funds to children's psychiatric hospitals and women and infants hospitals. There are just a handful of hospitals around the country that fall in these two categories, including two in Rhode Island. Indeed, they should also have access to the resources necessary to support the training of residents.
I am pleased that the GME Reform Act is supported by the only medical school in my state, the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
My colleagues, Leader Reid, Senator Nelson of Florida, and Senator Schumer have also taken great interest in supporting our future health care workforce by championing legislation to increase the number of physicians trained each year. This effort is vitally important to ending the shortage of primary care providers in many areas, responding to the increased demand of a growing and aging population, and preparing for the implementation of the new health insurance reform law. I look forward to continuing to support their efforts and working with them on the GME Reform Act as well.
