The FAIR Act makes changes to how Medicare pays for medical residency training programs at hospitals. Starting in 2024, hospitals that want to receive Medicare funding for training new doctors must now report information about their hiring practices and confirm they're treating osteopathic and allopathic medical school graduates fairly.

Specifically, hospitals have to tell the government how many applicants they received from osteopathic schools (schools that train doctors in osteopathic medicine) versus allopathic schools (traditional medical schools), and how many from each type they actually accepted. They also have to confirm that they accept applicants from both types of schools and that they treat licensing exam scores equally—meaning if they require an exam, they accept both the COMLEX-USA exam (used by osteopathic graduates) and the USMLE exam (used by allopathic graduates) as equally valid.

The government will then publish all this information on a public website so patients and the public can see which hospitals are giving fair consideration to graduates from both types of medical schools. The goal is to increase transparency and ensure that osteopathic doctors aren't being unfairly excluded from residency positions just because of the type of medical school they attended.

FAIR Act

Harshbarger, Diana

Fair Access In Residency Act or the FAIR Act This bill requires hospitals to certify that they accept residency applications from both osteopathic and allopathic medical schools and to disclose the number of applicants and acceptances from each type of program in order to receive graduate medical education payments under Medicare.