A third round of applications for graduate medical education federal funding has opened. The AAFP is encouraging eligible family medicine residency programs to apply before a March 31 deadline.

Section 126 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 authorized 1,000 new Medicare-funded residency positions, with a maximum of 200 distributed to qualifying hospitals each year. The first two rounds of residency positions awarded under Section 126 combined yielded about 100 new family medicine residency slots.

At least 10% of the residency positions must be distributed to each of four categories of hospitals, those that:

• serve rural areas,
• train more residents than their CMS-funded cap on positions,
• operate in states with new medical schools or additional locations and branches of existing medical schools, and
• serve designated Health Professional Shortage Areas.

CMS will prioritize funding based on hospitals’ HPSA scores, which measure need on a scale of 1 to 25. In the previous round of funding, announced in November 2023, the highest score among 99 hospitals awarded was 21 and the lowest was 14.

The funding application process and requirements, as well as an FAQ, are available on the CMS website.