Match Characteristics of Regional Medical Campus and Main Campus Students by Residency Program Type and Location

Background and Objectives: In response to the AAMC’s call to increase the number of medical school graduates in 2006, there has been a steady growth in the number of medical schools offering some or all of the medical education curriculum at regional medical campuses (RMC) across the country with 133 medical schools reporting a RMC in 2023.1 Additionally, RMC expansion plans were reported by 25 medical schools in a 2020-2021 survey.2 Because of this increase in the number of medical students attending RMCs, studies must be conducted to determine if attending a RMC influences matching into residency programs by location (in-region or out-of-region) and program type (community-based, university, etc.). This study aims to investigate this possible correlation between the University of Missouri School of Medicine (MUSOM) main campus in Columbia, Missouri, and its RMC in Springfield, Missouri. Methods: Match data was compiled for MUSOM’s main and regional campuses for 2018-2024. The Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database Access (FREIDA) was used to sort residency programs into their respective program types and locations. Fischer’s exact probability test was then used to calculate two-tailed p-values to determine if there was a significant difference between the proportion of students from each clinical campus who matched to different locations or program types (Community, Community-based University Affiliated, University, and Other). Results: Of the 690 MUSOM students with publicly available data, 583 were from the main campus and 107 from the regional medical campus. 41.1% of RMC students matched in-region versus 48.4% of main campus students (p=0.17). There was no significant association between the main campus and regional campus match rates and the different program types (p=0.51). Conclusion: Based on this analysis, there was no significant correlation between MUSOM main campus and regional campus student matches into residency programs classified as community, community-based university-affiliated, university, and other program types. Additionally, there was no significant correlation between MUSOM main campus and regional campus student matches into in-region versus out-of-region residency programs.