Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) is responsible for the accreditation of post-MD medical training programs within the United States.

Accreditation is accomplished through a peer review process and is based upon established standards and guidelines. The mission of the ACGME is to improve the quality of health in the U.S. by ensuring and improving the quality of graduate medical education experience for the physicians in training. The ACGME establishes national standards for graduate medical education by which it approves and continually assesses educational programs under its aegis. It uses the most effective methods available to evaluate the quality of graduate medical education programs. It strives to develop evaluation methods and processes that are valid, fair, open and ethical.

This voluntary association is formed by five member organizations, each of which has a major interest in and involvement with residency education. Member organizations each appoint four members to the ACGME Board of Directors, which also includes two resident members, three public directors, the chair of the Council of Review Committee Chairs and a non-voting federal representative.

The ACGME's five member organizations:

• American Board of Medical Specialties
• American Hospital Association
• American Medical Association
• Association of American Medical Colleges
• Council of Medical Specialty Societies

Each group of residency programs must have oversight by a sponsoring institution, a single Designated Institutional Official (DIO) and a Graduate Medical Education Committee (GMEC). Our sponsor is Yale New Haven Medical Center. This allows us to use each of our facilities and clinic sites for training under one accreditation.

The ACGME has 28 Residency Review Committees — one for each of the 26 residency specialties, one for a special one-year, transitional-year general clinical program, and one for institutional review. Each RRC comprises between six and 20 volunteer physicians. The functions of each RRC is to review programs, determine accreditation status, propose program requirements and design data-collection procedures.

Learn more about ACGME

Accreditation 101: An introduction to the Accreditation Process

Accreditation is the voluntary process that graduate medical training programs and/or sponsoring institutions undergo to determine whether they are in substantial compliance with established educational standards. Accreditation represents a professional judgment about the quality of the training program. In the United States, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has the jurisdiction for the accreditation of all medical training programs with established requirements.