Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2025

Key Points

• The bill would add 2,000 new Medicare-funded residency training slots every year from 2027 through 2033, for a total of 14,000 new positions at hospitals nationwide, to help more medical school graduates become licensed doctors.
• At least 10 percent of the new positions must go to rural hospitals, hospitals near sole community hospitals, or hospitals in areas with a shortage of health professionals, aiming to get more doctors into underserved parts of the country.
• Hospitals affiliated with historically Black medical schools, like Howard, Meharry, and Morehouse, get priority when new slots are distributed to shortage-area hospitals, a step aimed at increasing diversity in the physician pipeline.
• No single hospital can receive more than 75 new residency positions total over the seven-year period, spreading the new slots across many hospitals instead of concentrating them at a few large institutions.
• Hospitals must agree to actually increase their total number of resident trainees to get the extra federal funding, so the money can't be used to simply replace existing residency slots.
• The bill also orders a government study on the best ways to recruit more doctors from rural, lower-income, and underrepresented minority communities, with a report due to Congress within two years.