AHA House Letter Supporting the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2025

September 11, 2025

Dear Representatives Sewell and Fitzpatrick:

On behalf of our nearly 5,000 member hospitals, health systems and other health care organizations, our clinician partners — including more than 270,000 affiliated physicians, 2 million nurses and other caregivers — and the 43,000 health care leaders who belong to our professional membership groups, the American Hospital Association (AHA) writes to express our support for your legislation, H.R. 4731, the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2025. Your bipartisan bill would add 14,000 Medicare-funded residency positions over seven years, thereby helping to alleviate ongoing physician shortages that threaten patients’ access to care.

Congress established graduate medical education (GME) funding to ensure an adequate supply of well-trained physicians. However, the current cap on residency slots, established in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, restricts the number of residency slots for which hospitals may receive direct GME funding. A cap also limits the number of residents that hospitals may include in their ratios of residents to beds, which affects indirect medical education payments.

The bill would direct the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to increase the number of slots by 2,000 annually from 2026 through 2032. To better ensure that shortages in high-need communities are addressed, your bill would ensure that a significant portion of these new slots will be directed to rural hospitals, hospitals training above their existing resident caps, hospitals in states with new medical schools or campuses, and hospitals that serve health professional shortage areas (HPSAs) with a priority to those affiliated with historically Black medical schools.

Additionally, the bill would require the Government Accountability Office to study and report to Congress on strategies to increase the diversity of the health professional workforce. The AHA is firmly committed to ensuring hospitals’ staff and governance reflect the communities that they serve, and your bill would support our efforts.

We are grateful for your strong leadership in introducing H.R. 4731, the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act. The AHA stands ready to work with you to ensure its enactment.

Sincerely,
/s/
Lisa Kidder Hrobsky
Senior Vice President
Advocacy and Political Affairs