HRSA's PCRE grant recipients' plans for continuation after funding ends

In 2010, the US Department of Health and Human Services, under the Affordable Care Act, appropriated over $167 million to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) for the Primary Care Residency Expansion (PCRE) program. In 2011, grants from the PCRE program were provided to residency programs in the specialties of family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics, allowing them to increase the number of residents in their programs. Seventy-seven programs received grant funding, and 504 primary care resident positions were created. The grants provide 5 years of funding for these positions. There is no provision for federal funding of these positions after 2016. The purpose of this study was to determine the number of residencies that had identified funding that would allow them to continue training these new positions after the PCRE grant period ends.

Programs receiving PCRE funding were identified through the HRSA data warehouse website.1 Program directors were surveyed by email between January and March of 2013.

A total of 55 programs responded, for a 71.4% response rate. Of those programs, 17.5% had identified funding that would allow them to continue training the increased number of positions beyond 2016.

This one-time funding exhibits challenges to sustainability. This information will help inform policy makers that sustainable expansion of primary care graduate medical education (GME) training will require strategies other than time-limited funding mechanisms.