Commentary
The ACGME Caves, Suspends Enforcement of Diversity Requirements for Accreditation
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This is an enormous victory for medical education: on a Friday evening last week, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) announced that it would be suspending enforcement of two key “diversity” requirements.
The decision comes hot on the heels of an executive order by President Trump targeting accreditors for injecting DEI into medical education and singling out the ACGME by name for its DEI requirements.
The ACGME, which is the accrediting body for medical residency programs, explicitly cited “state or federal laws” in its decision to suspend enforcement.
“The ACGME has heard significant concerns from multiple constituents in several states and from federal Sponsoring Institutions about their ability to comply with some of the ACGME requirements addressing diversity in light of state or federal laws,” Debra F. Weinstein, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of the ACGME, and George E. Thibault, MD, Chair of the ACGME Board of Directors, said in a statement.
“Given this uncertainty surrounding the legality of Common Program Requirement I.C. and Institutional Requirement III.B.8., as well as related specialty/subspecialty-specific requirements, the Executive Committee of the ACGME Board of Directors is suspending enforcement of these requirements and will discuss this action with the ACGME Board at its June 2025 meeting,” they continued. “This reflects the ACGME Board’s responsibility for approval of accreditation requirements.”
The referenced requirements are, effectively, diversity hiring mandates that require residency programs and their sponsoring institutions (e.g. medical schools) to have recruiting and retention policies that aim to boost diversity.
The “Common Program Requirement I.C.” refers to the ACGME requirement that accredited residency programs must “engage in practices that focus on mission-driven, ongoing, systematic recruitment and retention of a diverse and inclusive workforce of residents, fellows (if present), faculty members, senior administrative GME staff members, and other relevant members of its academic community.”
The “Institutional Requirement III.B.8” applies the same diversity requirement to “sponsoring institutions” of residency programs.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of this action. Residency programs and their sponsoring institutions will no longer be forced to engage in diversity hiring practices (which, in practice, is effectively racial discrimination) as a condition of their accreditation.
As we’ve seen, medical schools subject to accreditation requirements that they pursue diversity objectives are keen to pass the buck and blame their DEI initiatives on accreditors.
For residency programs specifically, the ACGME’s decision removes all plausible deniability.
Now, the next step is for the Liaison Committee on Medical Education to follow suit, and suspend its diversity requirements.
