Global Health Nexus, Fall 2000

GME Funding Approved

NYU Dentistry has entered into a historic partnership with the NYU Hospitals Center, part of the recently-created Mount Sinai-NYU Medical Center/Health System, which will allow postgraduate dental students to receive salary support, full tuition remission, and health benefits for the first time through federal graduate medical education (GME) funding. This funding recognizes that postgraduate dental students, like hospital-based residents, make important contributions to patient care. It was made possible by changes in federal Medicare legislation—resulting from the Balanced Budget Act of 1997—that have enabled increasing numbers of dental school-based postgraduate programs to benefit from GME support that was previously available only to hospital residency programs.

NYU Dentistry will use the new GME support to strengthen and enhance its advanced education programs in general dentistry, pediatric dentistry, orthodontics, periodontics, endodontics, oral and maxillofacial surgery, and prosthodontics.

“This unprecedented partnership is very important to the College, both academically and financially,” said Dean Alfano. “Whereas current postgraduate students at NYU Dentistry pay tuition and fees amounting to approximately $40,000 per year over the two or three years of training, future students will pay no tuition and will receive an annual stipend of more than $30,000, together with full health benefits. By virtue of our ability to provide postgraduates with such attractive benefits, NYU Dentistry will be able to compete from a position of great strength for the best applicants across the nation.” The new funding will be phased in over the next few years, with full implementation anticipated by 2003.

The funding will also be used to allocate additional resources toward the postgraduate faculty and curricula. These changes will lay the groundwork for the realization of a new clinical Center of Excellence at NYU Dentistry which will provide a centralized home for all the postgraduate dental programs.