Single Accreditation and The Match: How Does the Change Affect Osteopathic Graduates?

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. There is a predicted serious shortage of physicians in the US. To overcome this problem, medical schools have expanded at the behest of the US Government by number and by overall graduates - both medical doctors and doctors of osteopathic medicine. However, the graduate medical program numbers are struggling to keep pace with the significant additional medical school graduates to adequately accommodate the larger supply of applicants for GME positions. Moreover, 2020 marks the first single accreditation system for graduate GME in the United States. Although a historical moment, it further contributes to the uncertainty of GME program availability and medical graduates match rates. In this article, we make a thorough analysis of traditional and recent matching rates for the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education programs for osteopathic medical graduates compared to medical school graduates and provide an insight of the 2020 single accreditation system match. Our data indicate that osteopathic medical graduates show increasing matching rates to previously ACGME programs, and the 2020 match shows the best matching rate so far.