NEJM - The Economics of Graduate Medical Education (Good read)

[Thego2guy]

I found this to be an interesting read given the reputation of the authors and the publisher. I figured you guys would enjoy it and if we have any floating med students/residents around here, they can chime in on this topic.

Edit: Here is the link

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1402468

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[NickNaylor]

I completely agree. Panel B is all you need to see to understand what's going on here. No increase in funding towards residencies yet the number of residents continues to increase. The argument that residents are a net drain on the hospital is ludicrous. Quite the contrary: cheap labor in the form of residents saves hospitals money by allowing them to not pay a midlevel to do the same work at probably double the cost while freeing up attendings to generate more volume.

No matter what anyone says, it's all about the Benjamins.


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[Thoroughbred_Med]

I completely agree. Panel B is all you need to see to understand what's going on here. No increase in funding towards residencies yet the number of residents continues to increase. The argument that residents are a net drain on the hospital is ludicrous. Quite the contrary: cheap labor in the form of residents saves hospitals money by allowing them to not pay a midlevel to do the same work at probably double the cost while freeing up attendings to generate more volume.

No matter what anyone says, it's all about the Benjamins.


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Totally agree. This was a great article.

Of course, no medical student wants to hear this but someone had to be the one to publish those figures...

 

[Thego2guy]

I completely agree. Panel B is all you need to see to understand what's going on here. No increase in funding towards residencies yet the number of residents continues to increase. The argument that residents are a net drain on the hospital is ludicrous. Quite the contrary: cheap labor in the form of residents saves hospitals money by allowing them to not pay a midlevel to do the same work at probably double the cost while freeing up attendings to generate more volume.

No matter what anyone says, it's all about the Benjamins.


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I agree with you. Have you seen this recent thread though? http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/why-do-residents-make-so-little.1068298/

A lot of the residents and attendings tend to disagree with the notion that residents yield a net profit. Hence when I saw this article in NEJM today I immediately thought of that thread. Anecdotal evidence < economic + statistical analysis.