Iowa Hospital Receive Additional Medical Residency Positions Following Grassley Law

WASHINGTON – For the second time this year, a law championed by Sen. Chuck Grassley is enhancing Iowa’s ability to recruit and train medical doctors.  MercyOne Iowa in Des Moines will receive Medicare funds to cover three additional graduate medical education (GME) residency positions made available under the 2020 law to support Iowa’s growing health care workforce needs. This is on top of funds for nearly six additional GME residency positions awarded to Iowa hospitals earlier this year.

“As I travel across Iowa, I hear about workforce needs in every community and the need for more doctors and health care workers,” Grassley said. “I’m glad another Iowa hospital will benefit from this additional distribution of medical residency positions on top of the positions awarded earlier this year. More doctors being trained in Iowa is good for patients. I will continue to work with Iowa’s health care leaders to address our workforce needs.”

“MercyOne and Iowa Heart are grateful to Sen. Chuck Grassley for his role in securing this federal funding, which allows us to expand our cardiology fellowship. This funding will allow us to grow our program and pathways for highly-skilled individuals, training even more high-quality providers to serve Iowans,” said Dr. Jennifer Goerbig-Campbell, Cardiology Fellowship Program Director at Iowa Heart Center.

In 2020, as Finance Committee chairman, Grassley worked to add 1,000 additional Medicare-funded GME residency positions nationwide to help meet the needs of health care workforce – particularly in rural and underserved communities. This is the largest increase in Medicare-funded residency slots in over 25 years.

Recently, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the second round distribution of 200 new GME residency positions as part of the 2020 law. The initial distribution was announced in January 2023. CMS will announce the additional 600 residency slots in the coming years.

In June, Grassley pressed CMS on how it’s implementing the additional residency positions for rural and underserved communities, as required by law. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 required that a minimum of 10 percent of residency slots be allocated to hospitals that are located in a rural area and underserved areas. In CMS’s response, the agency noted it intends to meet the 10 percent rural hospital distribution threshold in the overall distribution of 1,000 residency positions. Grassley will continue to monitor the agency’s efforts.

-30-