Running the federal Teaching Health Center (THC) Graduate Medical Education program created in 2011 under the Affordable Care Act costs much more than it was funded by Congress in 2015, according to an analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The program's goal is to increase the number of primary care doctors and dentists practicing in underserved parts of the United States.
A research team including George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health Professor Marsha Regenstein, Professor Fitzhugh Mullan and Senior Research Associate Mariellen Jewers coauthored “The Cost of Residency Training in Teaching Health Centers.” They collected detailed data on the costs of residency programs through a newly-designed costing survey completed by THC programs that had residents during the 2013-2014 academic year. Their analysis pegs the cost of training a resident in the THC program at $157,602 per year, $62,602 more than the current payment rate. This suggests that the programs are significantly underfunded and that if this trend continues the entire THC program would be put at risk.