Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical Education Payment Program

The purpose of the CHGME Payment Program is to compensate for the disparity in the level of Federal graduate medical education (GME) funding for freestanding children’s teaching hospitals versus other types of teaching hospitals. Hospitals typically receive GME support GME through Medicare, and those payments are provided to hospitals based on their Medicare patient volume. Freestanding children’s hospitals receive little to no GME funding from Medicare because children’s hospitals have a low Medicare caseload. The CHGME Payment Program supports freestanding children’s teaching hospitals that: 1) educate and train future pediatricians, pediatric sub-specialists, and other non-pediatric residents, including residents in dentistry; 2) provide care for vulnerable and underserved children; and 3) conduct innovative and valuable pediatric research. The CHGME Support Reauthorization Act of 2013 contained a provision to establish a quality bonus system (QBS). The goal of the QBS is to recognize and incentivize those CHGME Payment Program awardees with high quality training to meet the pediatric workforce needs of the nation.