Gaps in quality of diabetes care in internal medicine residency clinics suggest the need for better ambulatory care training

Abstract

To ensure that medical residents will be prepared to deliver consistently high-quality care, they should be trained in settings that provide such care. Residents in internal medicine, particularly, need to learn good care habits in order to meet the needs of patients with diabetes and other common chronic and high-impact illnesses. To assess the strength of such training, we compared the quality of medical care provided in sixty-seven US internal medicine residency ambulatory clinics with the quality of care provided by 703 practicing general internists. We found significant quality gaps in process, intermediate outcome, and patient-experience measures. These inadequacies in ambulatory training for internal medicine residents must be addressed by policy makers and educators-for example, by accelerating the movement toward new residency curricula that emphasize competency-based training.