It's often said that medicine is one such field that has the privilege of regulating itself. We do this by empowering private "non-profit" corporations(ACGME, LCME, ABMS, etc) to monopolize control over deciding the way we can practice. But I'm not convinced that the government would be any worse.
After all, we're talking about an arena(Graduate Medical Education) which is funded mostly -to the tune of over 10 billion dollars annually- by the US government, in the form a massive subsidy to hospitals, to cover the costs of resident training. Why not let the government regulate it, instead of an out-of-touch, unaccountable private corporation like the ACGME? After all, it is the US taxpayer who is footing the bill. There are substantial built-in advantages to government oversight, in the form of accountability and oversight from the legislative and executive branches. Also consider that the Freedom of Information Act guarantees transparency in operations, something absent from a private org like the ACGME.
Why rely on this monopolistic private corporation, which is only minimally accountable to a slew of private stake-holders and practically accountable to none? What has the ACGME done for us? They've failed to meaningfully address resident wellness and well-being in the form of common-sense duty hour restrictions and fair pay standards. The working and pay conditions medical residents are subjected to are antithetical to federal labor law. But the hospital lobby long ago got us written off as an exemption; no over-time pay protections for us.
GME is a government business. Let them regulate it. Like I said, they could do no worse. The ACGME needs to go.
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