The emergency medicine specialty is poised to develop its own platform to handle residency applications, rather than rely on the Electronic Residency Application Service, Medpage Today reported Oct. 9.
The Council of Residency Directors in Emergency Medicine said it spent a year reviewing ERAS alternatives after emergency medicine programs expressed concerns about growing challenges and limitations with the platform. ERAS, managed by the Association of American Medical Colleges, is widely used by medical school graduates to submit application materials to multiple residency programs at once.
In an Oct. 8 statement, the Council of Residency Directors in Emergency Medicine said it has partnered with ResidencyCAS to create a custom platform for the emergency medicine residency application process. CORD has not yet officially moved away from ERAS, but said it aims to transition to the new platform by the 2025-26 application season and match cycle. While the new program will initially be optional, the ultimate goal is for all programs to transition to ResidencyCAS.
"We understand that this is an aggressive schedule and scale," the committee said. "We will continue to open multiple opportunities for our members to actively participate in discussions and contribute to building our EM platform to meet our collective needs as we move forward."
Several other specialties — including OB/GYN, anesthesia and plastic surgery — are in various stages of transitioning to new platforms. OB/GYN is slated to use ResidencyCAS this application cycle, a process CORD said it will closely monitor.
If emergency medicine does switch to ResidencyCAS, it would be the largest specialty to move away from ERAS, according to Medpage Today.
In a statement to the publication, AAMC Chief Services Officer Gabrielle Campbell defended ERAS and said the group is committed to all specialties using the centralized platform to streamline the application process. She claims medical schools have reported confusion with having multiple application platforms, and that AAMC has taken positive steps to reduce administrative burden, save time and lower costs for applicants.
"Through this centralized process, the AAMC has been able to deliver greater transparency to applicants to enable them to apply to fewer programs, addressing the issue of application inflation, as well as supporting graduate medical education to train tomorrow's doctors," she told MedPage Today.