The 2023 Residency Match

Today, the results of the 2023 National Residency Match Program were released. Every year, the match determines where medical students in their senior year will be doing their residencies starting in July. There are some important take-away lessons from this year’s match.

The number of applications increased.

There were 48,156 applicants in this year’s match, up from 47,675 applicants last year. This was driven by an increase in foreign medical graduates (707) and U.S. osteopathic school seniors (153). Notably, the number of U.S. medical school seniors applying to the match dropped by 236 this year. Not all applicants certified a rank order list of residencies but of those who did submit a rank list, 81.1% matched to a first-year residency position. There were 1,239 couples (6% of match applicants) in this year’s match and they had a higher match rate of 93%, which has been constant for the past 35 years.

There were a total of 40,375 residency positions available in this year’s match, 3% more than last year. 93.3% of these positions filled in this year’s match. There were a total of 2,658 unfilled residency spots in this year’s match that will be available to unmatched students in the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program. This program is currently actively filling open positions so the results of the SOAP are not yet available.

Foreign medical graduates are back.

Until the COVID pandemic, foreign medical graduate applicants in the match had been steadily increasing. In 2022, there was the first-ever fall in the number of foreign medical graduates, primarily due to COVID travel restrictions and fear of the United States’ high COVID prevalence and high COVID death rate. In 2023, the number of foreign medical graduates increased to the highest number on record. Foreign medical graduates continue to have the lowest match rate with only 59.4% matching into a PGY-1 residency.

U.S. MD applicants once again had the highest match rates.

Seniors at U.S. medical schools had the highest match rate at 93.7%. This is similar to the match rate for these students over the past 40 years. Seniors at U.S. osteopathic schools had the next highest match rate at 91.6% which is the highest match rate ever for these students. U.S. citizens attending foreign medical schools were next with a 67.6% match rate and non-U.S. citizens from foreign medical schools had the lowest match rate at 59.4%.

The most popular specialties.

Categorical internal medicine had the most filled positions (9,345) followed by family medicine (4,511), categorical pediatrics (2,900), emergency medicine (2,456), and psychiatry (2,143). Several specialties have the option of either matching into an integrative PGY-1 position or matching into a PGY-2 position after doing a transitional or preliminary residency year. In the graph below, the specialties include the number of applicants matching into both PGY-1 and PGY-2 positions.

The above graph only includes 25 largest specialties and does not include specialties with small numbers of residency positions such as nuclear medicine.

Specialties with the largest growth in number of residency positions offered compared to last year include categorical internal medicine (+335), family medicine (+172), psychiatry (+117), emergency medicine (+79), anesthesiology (+65), neurology (+49), general surgery (+48), and primary care internal medicine (+24),

The most (and least) competitive specialties.

Competitive specialties are those that have the highest rate of filling either by U.S. medical school (MD) senior applicants or by total applicants. The major specialties with the highest percentage of available positions filled by U.S. medical school (MD) applicants were all surgical specialties: plastic surgery (92.3%), neurosurgery (86.8%), thoracic surgery (83.7%), otolaryngology (83.1%, and vascular surgery (80.6%). Ten specialties filled all available positions (100%) when considering all applicants: plastic surgery, thoracic surgery, dermatology, orthopedic surgery, anesthesiology, interventional radiology, radiation oncology, child neurology, physical medicine, and neurology.

Five major specialties filled fewer than 50% of available positions with U.S. medical school (MD)  applicants: emergency medicine (42.3%), pathology (39.5%), categorical internal medicine (36.9%), family medicine (29.2%), and preliminary surgery (21.7%). When considering all applicants, four specialties matched fewer than 90% of available positions: family medicine (88.7%), transitional year (87.8%), emergency medicine (81.6%), and preliminary surgery (51.4%).

The more competitive a specialty is, the larger the number of programs are ranked by each applicant. The largest average number of residency programs ranked by each U.S. medical school (MD) applicant were vascular surgery (19), neurosurgery (18), thoracic surgery (17), plastic surgery (15), and otolaryngology (14). On the other hand, primary care specialties had fewer average rankings per applicant: family medicine (4), internal medicine (5), emergency medicine (7), and pediatrics (8).

Which specialties are in trouble?

Emergency medicine has seen a fall in the total number of filled positions over the last 3 years. In the past, emergency medicine filled >99% of available positions but this dropped to 93% in 2022 and 82% in 2023. This year, emergency medicine had 554 unfilled positions, second only to family medicine (577 unfilled positions). Because of its past competitiveness, emergency medicine residencies have historically accepted relatively few foreign medical graduates. This year was no exception and foreign medical graduates only accounted for 2% of filled emergency medicine residency positions. The number of residency positions offered in emergency medicine has been increasing each year at a faster pace than other specialties. This, combined with the declining interest in emergency medicine by applicants signals that emergency medicine residencies will need to make adjustments in the future to attract more U.S. medical school graduates and U.S. osteopathic school graduates. In addition, emergency medicine residencies need to be more receptive to foreign medical graduate applicants.

The number of filled internal medicine preliminary year positions has also been steadily declining over the past 5 years. However, this decline has been offset by a steady increase in the number of filled transitional year positions, suggesting that applicants are selecting transitional year programs instead of internal medicine preliminary year programs. These two types of 1-year programs are very similar and often both offered by the same departments at teaching hospitals.

These are your future doctors

In 3 1/2 years, the students who matched today will begin completing residency programs and will begin to enter the attending physician workforce. The results suggest a future worsening of the shortage of primary care physicians and emergency medicine physicians. The results also indicate that foreign medical graduates will comprise an increasing percentage of practicing physicians in the United States in the future.

March 17, 2023