Special Consideration Pathway Pilot Program for International Medical Graduates Who Meet ACGME’s Exceptionally Qualified Candidate Criteria

[Mehena]

I received an email from the ABIM Medical Oncology board discussing a pathway to bypass the US Internal Medicine residency and enter a fellowship program for certification. Similar to the encroachment of APP in medical subspecialties, it is reasonable to have concerns about the potential impact on the availability of fellowship spots or the job market. While addressing the physician shortage is important, it is unclear why governing bodies would resort to truncating training duration or lowering entrance standards as a solution.

Medical Oncology Board Meeting Summary | Spring 2023

The Medical Oncology Board held its spring meeting on Monday, May 22, 2023. The agenda provided an opportunity to update the Specialty Board on activity at ABIM and allowed for discussion of pressing issues in the field. The Specialty Board was joined by Jamie H. Von Roenn, MD, FASCO, Vice...

blog.abim.org

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[CatFactorial]

Would many fellowship programs go for it? I doubt they’d want to bypass the quality control of ACGME residency

 

[Ubba]

Smells like corruption.

 

[bobsmith]

Would many fellowship programs go for it? I doubt they’d want to bypass the quality control of ACGME residency

Counterpoint: Hospitals love cheap labor

On a side note, I found the following quote from that same link interesting:

Misinformation and mistrust of physicians, such as some longstanding patients newly developing mistrust based on misinformation or an assumption that doctors are hiding cures from their patients. Myeloma patients were identified as being particularly impacted by misinformation

I was surprised to see myeloma patients called out here as I have not run into this - my personal experience has been more breast/colon but that could be a absolute # vs % thing

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

Money. That’s it. Similar things are happening at the stage level with states like TN granting licenses to international medical graduates who never competed a U.S. residency

 

[CCM-MD]

This is a bad idea. I saw this in the ABIM meeting minutes and emailed the leadership about my concerns.

This pathway is not for Heme/Onc alone - its for all subspecialties. So someone could potentially hop onto one of the many open nephrology or geriatrics spot and skip IM residency entirely.