This article was originally published by the American Health Lawyers Association. Copyright 2014, American Health Lawyers Association, Washington, DC.  Reprint permission granted.

Recently, the Obama Administration released its fiscal year 2015 budget proposal, which includes several proposals of special interest to children’s hospitals. The Budget proposes several new and strategic investments in the nation’s health care workforce that the Administration believes will help to improve the delivery of health care services, particularly primary care services, to underserved areas and populations.

One key component of the Administration’s initiative is to create an “updated approach” to residency training by targeting $5.23 billion in mandatory funds to establish a new Targeted Support for Graduate Medical Education Program (Targeted Support Program). The Targeted Support Program would be administrated by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. This new competitive grant program would be used to fund teaching hospitals, children’s hospitals, and several community-based consortia “to support new residency slots in primary care or other high need specialties, not supported by current graduate medical education payments.” The initiative is expected to support 13,000 residents over ten years.

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