On February 26, members of the US House of Representatives reintroduced a bipartisan bill designed to help hospitals that accidentally established Medicare GME caps and/or per-resident amounts based on small numbers of resident rotators. The bill (H.R. 1358) was introduced by Representatives Ron Kind (D‑WI) and Mike Gallagher (R‑WI).

The legislation addresses three problems:

• Accidental establishment of a hospital's resident limit, or "cap": The bill would permit community hospitals whose caps were accidentally established by small numbers of resident rotators to build and receive Medicare funding for new residency programs. Under the legislation, any hospital whose cap was established based on training fewer than 3.0 full-time equivalent (FTE) resident rotators from new residency training programs between October 1, 1997, and the date of enactment, would be permitted to establish new GME caps.
  
  
• Accidental establishment of a hospital's per-resident amount (PRA): The bill would permit community hospitals whose PRAs were accidentally established by small numbers of resident rotators to build and receive Medicare funding for new residency training programs. Under the legislation, any hospital whose PRA was established based on training fewer than 3.0 FTE resident rotators between October 1, 1997, and the date of enactment, would be permitted to establish a new PRA.
  
  
• Extremely low base-year cap: Any hospital whose base-year GME cap was set based on the training of less than 1.0 FTE resident prior to October 1, 1997, would be permitted to establish a new FTE cap. 

Moving forward, a hospital's GME caps and PRA would not be established until the hospital trained more than 1.0 FTE resident in a given fiscal year. 

The GME @ Dentons team keeps abreast of legislative developments affecting graduate medical education reimbursement. We are available to answer your questions, and we continue to advocate on behalf of our clients on resident rotator issues.