It has seemed to be true over the last 2 and a half decades. By the time the ACGME shuts down a program (takes a few years of warnings), the quality of residents that they have at the time of shut down tends to be well below average, as noted above. No super competitive medical student with lots of choices is going to go to a program that is circling the drain. Then, it becomes an act of charity for the other programs to accept these residents into their programs.
It should be expected that they will be VERY far behind after training in a bad program (for 1-3 years) with little to no support after they started the program as a below average candidate. It is a recipe that should be fairly predictable. There will be some diamonds in the rough, but I think it plays out as expected far more often than not. The accepting program then has the burden of accepting that they will have a resident that will likely struggle to pass boards etc and that will hurt their own program's board pass rates, which is a major factor in how a program is evaluated by the ACGME. Those failures will take 5 years to cycle off of the ABA/RRC's books, so taking 1 resident to a mid size program can drop your pass rate from 100% to 90% real quick. If they take 2 or more, watch out. Bigger programs can absorb more before the hit is noticeable, but the program director's pain will be similar.
