The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has given approval for the University of Buffalo to start its new medical residency program in radiology.
The program will operate within the university's Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and will train a total of 16 residents specializing in radiology over the next four years. The first class of four medical students will be recruited in the National Resident Matching Program that takes place in March 2019.
The approval marks a major milestone in efforts to revive the program, which closed in 2006 when the Jacobs School voluntarily withdrew the program from ACGME accreditation. The withdrawal occurred at a time when the university had a limited number of radiology faculty members.
Since then, consolidation has occurred among healthcare providers in the region, with a new integrated healthcare network set up to better coordinate training and care. Healthcare educators soon realized that the region needed a resident training program, and the initiative gained steam when the radiology group Great Lakes Medical Imaging joined the Jacobs School's department of radiology in 2016. The chair of the department, Dr. Kenneth Pearsen, is also president of Great Lakes.
Core faculty members in the department are fellowship-trained in radiology's nine specialty areas: neuroradiology, musculoskeletal radiology, vascular and interventional radiology, cardiothoracic radiology, breast imaging, abdominal radiology, pediatric imaging, ultrasound, and nuclear radiology including PET and nuclear cardiology.
