Jump to Article
Sponsoring Institution
Program
GME Office / Administration
Finance / Public Policy
Sponsoring Institution
By: Alfred Peters-Perez, MBA,MDIv, PhD MLIS alfred@partnersinmeded.com
Strategic Alignment: Aligning GME Expansion with the Hospital System’s Objectives
With the medical landscape evolving and the race to keep current and afloat, GME programs also need to be proactive in following developments in the work world. Single-hospital residency programs based in medical centers that fail to successfully transition to accommodate changes in the patient and payer landscape often find themselves abruptly confronted with a loss of primary patient populations, clinical experiences, and funding. Conversely, an inner-city medical center and rural institution partnered to increase the scope of women’s and maternal health offered and also opened a rural track in their OBGYN residency program.
GME expansion is not just a numbers game—it is a reflection of a vision shared by Sponsoring Institutions (SIs) and their hospital system partners. To craft residency and fellowship programs that will flourish, SIs will need to harmonize their growth plan with the strategic objectives of their health system partners.
GME can’t be success alone – Alignment is essential
Hospital organizations are increasingly pressured to balance workforce shortages, enhance care delivery, and hit population health targets. When SIs align their program planning with such system imperatives as growing access for behavioral health or chronic disease management, they find allies, financing, and sustainability. Improved planning ensures medical education does not undermine, but supports, the clinical focus of the hospital.
Utilize hospital strategic plans as your North Star – Mapping Strategic Priorities
Begin by looking at your main clinical partner’s strategic plan. Do you see them developing a new heart center? Investing in rural health outreach? Your GME office should participate in strategic planning meetings, ask for workforce projections, and look for pain points that education can address. Programs aligned with service line growth or retention needs are much more likely to gain the support of the institution as well as ACGME accreditation.
Practical Alignment Strategies
Here are five approaches to translating alignment into action:
- Integrate GME leaders onto hospital planning committees.
- Research HR workforce statistics to determine specialty deficits or high-turnover areas.
- Create business cases for new programs identifying educational and service needs.
- Partner in grant submissions or government funding related to workforce development.
- Tie program results (e.g., board certification rates, retention) with system quality measures.
Strategic alignment between GME programs and hospital system goals is not just beneficial—it’s essential. By integrating educational initiatives with health system priorities, institutions can create sustainable, high-impact training environments that address real-world workforce needs. This collaborative approach ensures that GME expansion strengthens both clinical care and the future of healthcare delivery.
Program
By: Heather Peters, M.Ed, PhD heather@partnersinmeded.com
Tackle Your ADS Updates with Confidence
The ACGME’s Annual Data System (ADS) update window for programs is here—and with it comes the opportunity to showcase both compliance and strategic progress. Between July and September, program directors must verify faculty rosters, confirm case logs, and provide meaningful updates in the Major Changes section.
Expert Tip: Complete your ADS updates side-by-side with Annual Program Evaluation (APE) documentation. Why? These two activities require overlapping data points—from scholarly activity to curriculum changes—and working on them in tandem not only saves time but strengthens internal consistency. Coordinating the two ensures that what’s reported in ADS reflects the real story of your program’s progress, goals, and challenges.
Don’t overlook the Major Changes section. This is the place to flag any significant updates since your last submission, such as new participating sites, revised curricula, notable changes in leadership or structure, or areas identified for improvement based on recent ACGME survey results. Providing clear, accurate information here not only demonstrates transparency—it can also prevent follow-up questions or citations down the line.
Need a refresher? Our webinar *ADS Update 2025* is now available in the on-demand library. At Partners®, we’re here to help programs navigate the ADS update season smoothly. Whether you need a quick compliance check or a deeper review to ensure alignment with all ACGME requirements, our consultants provide targeted support to keep your data—and your program—on track.
GME Office / Administration
By: Cheryl Haynes, BA, Cheryl@partnersinmeded.com
Take your Seat at the Leadership Table
Much time, energy, and effort are placed in our programs’ continuous improvement process. As leaders in our respective programs and institutions, Coordinators/ Administrators should place the same emphasis on their roles and contributions to continuous improvement. Are you, as a member of the leadership team, applying the Common Program Requirements (CPR) for Program Evaluation and Improvement to your position?
Per the CPR there must be a review of the program’s self-determined goals and progress toward meeting them; guiding ongoing program improvement, including development of new goals, based upon outcomes; and review of the current operating environment to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) as related to the program’s mission and aims. This is a great way to look at your contributions to your leadership team.
When you think of your job, what is your mission? Mine was to do everything I could to support the Program Director and my Residents. Enhancing processes, making things not just easier, but more practical for everyone, was my aim.
Appropriately, the majority of our focus as a leadership team is framed through a clinical lens, with decisions made based on evidence. Since some of us in program administration are not clinicians, it is easy to feel as though we don’t have much to contribute, and clinically, that may be true. But take a minute and think about the evidence we have at our fingertips.
ITE and Board Results Analysis
ITE and Board Results Analysis is a valuable tool for curriculum development. This includes the analysis of your program’s In-Training exam performance and determining areas for improvement. By conducting the initial analysis, we can highlight trends over time and patterns that could impact training. We can do the initial analysis of performance in blueprint categories and determine concepts where the program is falling short. Performance on an ITE is dependent on the individual resident, their educational background, study habits, and commitment to learning are instrumental in their successful performance. An analysis of the data can provide curriculum insights regarding categories the majority of your residents are struggling, or identify concepts that are not sufficiently covered by rotations or didactics. Compare those troubled areas with your didactics schedule. Do your didactics sufficiently and proportionately address those categories? Going a step further, what better outcome to use as a metric than your board certification exam results? You will learn much from this process, and your leadership team will need your perspective.
Match Data
Have you looked at your Match data? Are you attracting the types of candidates that best fit your program? What about your Match results? As a previous coordinator, I know that there is no magic formula; take the time to look at your data and outcomes. What can you recommend to better focus your recruitment efforts and your interview experience to positively impact your future outcomes?
These are two examples of how you can contribute to the continuous improvement of your program. But it’s not just the big things; examining your annual routine from your perspective can lead to your improvement goals. Most of you have just wrapped up credentialing of your new residents/fellows. Orientation is well under way, if not completed. Take a minute to reflect on this year’s processes and outcomes. What changed? What fires did you have to extinguish that could have been prevented? What could have been done better? Now is the time to look at these things and plan for next year. Clearly, there are always roadblocks that are put in our way that we have absolutely no control over, but having everything else well planned and prepared will make those roadblocks easier to navigate.
The first reason for maintaining the status quo is usually the time factor. How many times do we hear, “I’d like to do that, but I don’t have time”? A quote that has driven me is from Zig Ziglar, a popular and very successful author and motivational speaker from a few decades ago, when he said, “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have 24-hour days.” We need to maximize the time devoted to program improvement (this includes your role in GME leadership); your efforts can provide that needed direction. You know your program’s strengths, you have seen missed opportunities, and you have ideas to address the program’s challenges.
The possibilities for you in your role to positively impact your programs’ improvement are endless. Every time you have the thought that something could be improved, it likely can. But it won’t happen if you don’t speak up. Whether it is in open discussion at a PEC meeting, a conversation with a trusted faculty member, a meeting with the PD, or sending charts through email to the PEC members, or however you choose to communicate, don’t hesitate to share your perspective and what you have learned. Take your seat at the leadership table; be an active participant in the continuous improvement of your program; you have much to contribute.
Finance / Public Policy
By: Amy Durante, MHA amy@partnersinmeded.com
A Different Kind of Administration
With any new administration, whether it be hospital or governmental, change is inevitable. It is important for us to understand what our role is in this change and how to proceed to ensure, maintain and sustain compliance as well as provide the best training and experience to our residents and fellows.
The most recent changes that have affected the Graduate Medical Education (GME) community include government visa interventions and a signed executive order related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) requirements where the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) as well as the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) were named.
The question on everyone’s mind is, what do we do now? and the simple answer is, don’t do it alone. With change comes uncertainty and anxiety and one’s instinct might be to immediately take action, but it is important to remember that you are part of a greater GME community within your Sponsoring Institution and all need to work together to be on the same page and ensure compliance with all requirements.
The following are a few suggestions that programs and Sponsoring Institution might want to consider:
- Track – With regards to visas or any other changes that might arise, keep track via a shared excel spreadsheet or other preferred software of how each program and/or trainee is maintaining compliance i.e. have they had and/or have a scheduled appointment for their visa.
- Communicate – Schedule a Graduate Medical Education Committee (GMEC) to discuss the impact this will have on your programs and Sponsoring Institution.
- Determine next steps which can include:
- A vote on how long the programs will be able to wait for those that have not scheduled their appointments to begin their training.
- Once the time frame is determined, a memo should be drafted and reviewed by the Sponsoring Institution’s legal department which clearly indicates the amount of time the program will wait for the trainee to receive their visa. This memo should be sent to all trainees who have not yet scheduled their appointments. While it is not the fault of the trainee, the program still needs to ensure that the stipulations within their contracts are upheld as well as ensure continuity and education of all trainees within the program.
- With respect to current trainees, discuss the potential for changes to international travel and/or international rotation requests.
- Determine as a GMEC how any questions related to DEI will be addressed.
- Determine next steps which can include:
- Follow-Up – Ensure all Program Directors and Program Coordinators are made aware of any action items and follow up throughout the process.
It is important to keep up to date knowledge via ECFMG, DOS, SEVIS etc. While programs and the Sponsoring Institutions are required to follow the changes that administration have put into place, we need to be sure to continue to comply with oversight requirements of the ACGME. The programs should not operate in silos, but rather the GME community should work collaboratively.
 |
 |
 |