Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education (CHGME) Payment Program | HRSA 25 079

Opportunity Information: Apply for HRSA 25 079

The Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical Education (CHGME) Payment Program is a federal grant program designed to help close a long-standing funding gap in how the United States supports physician training. In most teaching hospitals, the largest source of federal graduate medical education (GME) financing comes through Medicare, which is administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Because Medicare primarily covers older adults, full-service teaching hospitals that treat many Medicare patients tend to receive substantial Medicare GME support. Freestanding children's teaching hospitals, however, typically care for patients who are mostly children and therefore have very low Medicare patient volume. As a result, they often receive little to no Medicare-based GME funding even when they run major residency and fellowship programs. CHGME exists specifically to offset that imbalance so children's hospitals can continue training pediatric and pediatric subspecialty physicians without being structurally disadvantaged by Medicare's patient mix.

The program is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), specifically HRSA's Bureau of Health Workforce (BHW). In practical terms, CHGME provides payments to eligible hospitals to support the costs associated with operating approved GME programs in settings where Medicare does not adequately reimburse training expenses. While Medicare GME payments are tied to Medicare utilization, CHGME recognizes that children's hospitals still incur the same categories of training-related costs (such as resident salaries and benefits, supervision, educational infrastructure, and the added clinical costs that come with teaching) even though their patient population does not generate comparable Medicare reimbursement.

Eligibility centers on being a freestanding children's hospital that functions as a teaching hospital. The opportunity states that eligible applicants are freestanding children's hospitals whose inpatients are predominantly under 18 years of age, that participate in an approved graduate medical education program, and that have a Medicare payment agreement. The notice points applicants to Section III.1 of the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the complete and controlling eligibility requirements, which typically spells out the specific documentation, certification, and program participation standards a hospital must meet.

This particular funding opportunity is listed as a discretionary grant under HRSA, with Funding Opportunity Number HRSA-25-079 and CFDA (Assistance Listing) 93.255. The original closing date shown is August 8, 2024, and the anticipated number of awards is 59, suggesting broad participation among qualifying children's teaching hospitals nationwide. The posting also lists an award ceiling of 0, which generally indicates that a single fixed maximum award amount is not specified in the summary field and that payment amounts are likely determined by statutory or formula-based calculations described in the full NOFO rather than by a traditional competitive cap.

Overall, CHGME is essentially a corrective financing mechanism: it does not exist because children's hospitals train fewer physicians or have lower training costs, but because the dominant federal GME funding stream (Medicare) does not follow pediatric patient care settings the way it follows adult-serving hospitals. By directing HRSA-administered payments to freestanding children's teaching hospitals, the program helps stabilize and sustain pediatric workforce training pipelines and supports the broader health system goal of ensuring adequate access to pediatric and pediatric subspecialty care.

• The Health Resources and Services Administration in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education (CHGME) Payment Program" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.255.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-06-26.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-08-08. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 59 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

Apply for HRSA 25 079

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