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Home residency programs can provide medical students with opportunities for networking, mentorship, research, and exposure to surgeries. The goal of this project was to understand the potential impact of home surgical residencies on student match rates into specific surgical specialties. This 5-year retrospective study (2019-2023) analyzed 12,916 matched applicants from 155 United States MD programs through publicly available match lists. Odds ratios (ORs) were used to determine the likelihood of students from institutions with home surgical residency programs (home programs) matching into desired surgical specialties compared to students from institutions without home programs. Additional variables included the Alpha Omega Alpha and the Gold Humanism Honor Society statuses of the medical school, the number of faculty, and the type of residency program. Of the matched applicants, 11,442 had home programs resulting in a 39.1% match rate into surgical specialties compared to a 22.3% match rate for students without a home program (OR: 1.76) (P < 0.001). Of the applicants with a home program compared to those without a home program, 69.2% matched into an academic residency (OR: 1.06), 7.7% matched into a community residency (OR: 0.90), 13.6% matched into a combined residency (OR: 0.95), and 2.5% matched into a military residency (OR: 1.31). Medical students graduating from institutions with home programs were 1.76 times more likely to match into a surgical residency program compared to those graduating from institutions without a home program. Future studies should look at how access to certain resources may influence a student's match rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The match rate of medical schools in the U.S. has been extensively studied from the perspective of applicants and influential factors. A method to objectively estimate the efficiency of a medical school's match rate has not been described in the literature. Such a method constitutes a significant improvement opportunity for medical schools via benchmarking best practices. This research fills the gap and proposes a bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) framework to assess the residency match rate efficiency of medical schools. The efficacy of the proposed method is confirmed when benchmarking the Texas allopathic medical schools to representative samples of allopathic medical schools in the United States. The model allows to determine the statistical significance of differences in the residency match rate efficiency between groups of medical schools. The proposed bootstrap DEA approach is used to estimate the real efficiency's density function of 40 medical schools in the U.S. over the 2018–2020 period. The aggregate efficiency estimation showed that the medical schools are performing at a high competitive level; they have experienced a slight decline in scale efficiencies and have preserved high managerial performance. The study measured four groups: Texas medical schools, top ten ranked, middle ten ranked, and bottom ten ranked U.S. medical schools. The overall major improvement opportunity for medical schools is the scale of operations. Results confirm that medical schools are shown to be efficient in training future physicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of employer matching contributions on leakage at job termination. The U.S. government imposes a 10% penalty to discourage preretirement leakage—cash withdrawal from 401(k) retirement savings before the age of 59.5 years. In our data set with 162,360 terminating employees covered by 28 retirement plans, 41.4% of employees leaked by cashing out 401(k) savings at job separation, most draining their entire accounts. We investigate the impact of employer matching contributions on leakage at job termination. The "composition" of funds in one's 401(k) balance matters: leakage increases with employer contribution proportion. Micropatterns in our data align more with behavioral than with economic explanations of this effect. We estimate that a 50% increase in employer/employee match rate increases leakage probability by 6.3% at job termination. However, there could be a 35.3% reduction in leakage probability if employees ignore the perceived incentive generated by the account composition effect. Approximately 60% of accumulated assets from a 50% increase in match rate leak out of the system due to the account composition effect attributable to the percentage of assets contributed by the employer. Employers with more generous matches care about their employees' well-being in retirement, but unintentionally nudge employees to cash out when they change jobs. We highlight proposals to help employers curb avoidable leakage. History: K. Sudhir served as the senior editor and Tat Chan served as associate editor for this article. Funding: This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Grant 435-2018-0509]. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2022.1404. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Discrepancies have previously been identified in terms of sex and medical degree throughout orthopaedic education. The purpose of this study was to evaluate trends in the degree type and sex of applicants to adult reconstruction fellowships., Methods: The San Francisco (SF) match data from 2012 to 2023 was analyzed. Data regarding the number of applicants and match rates based on applicant degree and sex were evaluated. Pearson's correlation test was used to evaluate trends for the number of applicants and match rates., Results: The number of applicants for both women (r = 0.64, P = 0.009) and men (r = 0.81, P = 0.0004) had a significant increase annually over the study period. Women applicants (r = 0.27, P = 0.19) did not have a significant change in match rate, while men candidates (r = 0.74, P = 0.002) experienced a significant increase over the study period. Although women applicants matched at a slightly higher rate than men applicants (87.6 versus 84.8%), this difference was not statistically significant (Odds Ratio (OR) = 1.14, Confidence Interval (CI) = 0.71 to 1.83, P = 0.64). Osteopathic applicants (r = 0.4, P = 0.09) did not experience a significant change in the number of applicants, while allopathic candidates (r = 0.8, P = 0.0006) did experience a significant increase. Both osteopathic candidates (r = 0.76, P = 0.001) and allopathic candidates (r = 0.62, P = 0.01) experienced a significant increase in match rate. From 2012 to 2023, allopathic applicants were more likely to match into an Adult Reconstruction fellowship than osteopathic applicants (OR = 2.47, CI = 1.86 to 3.26, P = 0.0001)., Conclusions: Men and women applicants match at equal rates for the Adult Reconstruction Fellowship. Osteopathic graduates, regardless of sex, are consistently ranked lower by Adult Reconstruction fellowship programs in the fellowship match process and are less likely to match than allopathic graduates., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Context Medical students and graduates apply for post-graduate year-one positions every year through the Single Accreditation System (SAS) National Residency Match Program (NRMP). New opportunities have arisen for osteopathic graduates through the transition to a single match. There is a paucity of information evaluating the effects of this single match on osteopathic (DO) and allopathic (MD) candidates in relation to match rates in competitive surgical sub-specialties such as neurosurgery, thoracic surgery, vascular surgery, otolaryngology (ENT), plastic surgery, orthopedic surgery, and general surgery. Objectives This paper utilizes published data to accomplish three tasks. Firstly, it investigates the effects of the SAS on DO and MD match rates in surgical subspecialties of neurosurgery, thoracic surgery, vascular surgery, ENT, plastic surgery, orthopedic surgery, and general surgery. Secondly, it investigates whether program director credentials and impressions correlate with the match rates of DO or MD candidates in each of these specialties. Finally, it discusses solutions for addressing ways to improve match outcomes for all candidates. Methods Previously published NRMP, National Matching Services, and Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education websites were queried for the number of DO and MD senior applicants for each position, match success rates, program director impressions, and program director credentials for the years 2018-2023. Match success rates were defined as a ratio of the number of candidates that applied to the number who successfully matched. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-squared testing, student t-tests, and linear regression where appropriate. A p-value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. Results From 2020-2023, an increasing proportion of DO residents applied for the selected surgical subspecialties, increasing from 599 applicants in 2020 to 743 candidates in 2023. Overall match rates for DOs remain significantly lower than MD match rates for each of these specialties as well as overall (p-values all <0.05) with summative match rates of 52.89% for DOs compared to 73.61% for MDs in 2023 for the selected surgical subspecialties. From 2020 to 2023 match rates were 30.88% for DOs compared to 74.82% for MDs in neurosurgery, 16.67% versus 46.45% (DO vs MD) in thoracic surgery, 4.17% vs 68.84% (DO vs MD) in plastic surgery, 57.62% vs 73.18% (DO vs MD) in general surgery, 23.21% vs 74.18% (DO vs MD) in vascular surgery, 53.10% vs 72.57% (DO vs MD) for ENT, and 56.92% vs 72.51% (DO vs MD) for orthopedics. There was a statistically significant correlation between the proportion of DO program directors with the rate of DOs matching in the associated specialty (p=0.012). Conclusion There were significantly lower rates for DO candidates compared to MD candidates matching into selected surgical subspecialties of neurosurgery, thoracic surgery, vascular surgery, ENT, plastic surgery, orthopedic surgery, and general surgery. This may be addressed through increasing advocacy at local and national levels, improving mentorship, increasing DO medical student exposure to surgical subspecialties, and ensuring increasing selected surgical subspecialty involvement in teaching these diverse DO applicants in order to strengthen medicine and continue to address predicted growing physician shortages., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright © 2023, Brazdzionis et al.)