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The Case for Benchmarking

Steven A. Schroeder, MD

JAMA. 1996;276(22):1841-1843.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Public policy debates continue to swirl around the topic of physician supply for at least 4 reasons. First, entry into medicine, in contrast to many occupations, is not left to the dynamics of the market. Numerical limits on the number of medical school positions are determined by a voluntary educational establishment entrusted with the responsibility of training physicians. Even in periods when medicine seemed a relatively unattractive field—as in the mid 1980s—there were substantially more applicants than available first-year positions. Furthermore, and in contrast to schools of law or business, the application pool is diminished by the need to overcome significant academic hurdles (such as organic chemistry) required for admission.

See also p 1811.

Second, medicine differs from most other careers in the extent to which the public subsidizes the educational process. At the medical school level, this occurs mainly at the 77 public institutions that enjoy some line-item support . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, NJ.

Footnotes
Reprints: Steven A. Schroeder, MD, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, PO Box 2316, Princeton, NJ 08543-2316.

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