Policies that support graduate medical education (GME) have goals of increasing the proportion of program graduates who remain in generalist practice and, for pediatrics, in subspecialties supported through the Children’s Hospital Graduate Medical Education Program. Policy attention has also focused on promoting practice in primary care health professional shortage areas, and in rural and micropolitan counties. Although individual states have spent millions of dollars annually on residency training, it has become apparent that they have little knowledge of what their investment yields in terms of producing a physician workforce that includes sufficient generalists and subspecialists that practice in underserved locations.

This policy brief explores outcome metrics that can be used to evaluate pediatric GME investments in producing the workforce that meets state and national health care needs.