George Washington University Health Workforce Institute

In 2015, the federal government spent $14.5 billion to fund graduate medical education training for physicians. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was responsible for 90 percent of this spending. A new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommends information that the agency can collect to aid in determining whether the programs are helping to ensure that enough doctors with specialties that people need will be in the places where our country needs them.

In a blog published in Health Affairs, Edward Salsberg and Clese Erikson of the Department of Health Policy and Management at GW’s Milken Institute of Public Health discuss the implications of the reality that doctors of osteopathic medicine, or DOs, now comprise 26 percent of first-year medical students in the United States with further increases expected.