Detroit Medical Center will add 79 residency positions during the next two years, and all the positions will be funded by CMS, according to Crain's Detroit Business.
Patricia Wilkerson-Uddyback, MD, vice president of graduate medical education and community affairs at DMC, told Crain's the institution decided to create additional residency positions to address the area's shortage of primary care physicians.
While many medical schools choose to self-fund residents and fellows, the 79 positions at DMC will be funded by CMS, as the seven-hospital system has room under its federal resident reimbursement cap, Dr. Wilkerson-Uddyback told Crain's.
Medicare typically funds the bulk of medical residents' services for hospitals. However, the program imposed a cap on the number of residents it pays for in 1996. Each hospital's cap may differ, but institutions are allowed to add residents using their own resources.
"We are expanding most of the programs and taking existing programs and combining them. Some [residency] programs were not full," Dr. Wilkerson-Uddyback said, adding that DMC "had an opportunity to fill them" under the caps.
She said most residents will be accepted into DMC's internal medicine program and other primary care programs, while a smaller number will enter its neurology programs.
Officials at DMC — part of Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare — also recently approved a 12 percent raise for residents, effective this year. The raise will boost residents' salary above the the average $50,000 per year, according to the report.
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