Introduction/Background: Communicating the value of education to key leaders is vital to successfully advocating for resources, yet demonstrating that value with data is hard - unless you know what leaders perceive to be GME’s value and the associated evidence they will respect.

Hypothesis/Aim:To identify what system leaders’ value regarding our GME programs, compare that what GME leaders’ value, and identify associated evidence to demonstrate the return on investment to the system.

Methods: Conduct brief (15 minutes) structured interviews with system leaders asking them to answer 3 questions. (1) When you need to advocate for the value of our GME Programs, what do you highlight? (2) What do you wish others would value about our GME Programs? (3) What evidence would convince them of GME’s value? Few notes were recorded by interviewers. GME leaders were then queried during F2F meetings (eg GMEC) and provided written responses. Responses to Qs 1-2 were analyzed to identify system and GME leader themes and the associated evidence using accepted qualitative strategies for narrative data.

Results: Ninety four percent (29/31) system leaders responded and input was received from 22 GME programs and additional GME administrative leaders. There was strong agreement within and between all leader groups on how GME adds value: (1) Pipeline for Future Physician Workforce; (2) Promoting a culture of continuous learning that moves us forward as a high reliability organization; (3) Enhancing reputation/prestige of the system as it is identified as an academic institution; (4) Meets our community/professional expectations; (5) Business case for learning (quality, safety, patient experience). Evidence desired for each value includes a combination of quantitative metrics, benchmarked to a standard (eg, retention x program relative to external recruitment; teaching site engagement scores) and qualitative data (eg, examples of GME driven innovations, QI projects including AIAMC NI’s, how learners “teach” their teams).

Conclusions: Our system and GME leaders provided key perspectives on the value of GME to our organization. While the recruitment pipeline is a common talking point for GME, our value to the organization’s reputation, our critical role in promoting learning within our organization and GME as a community and professional responsibility provide new areas for GME to demonstrate its value with evidence. Next steps are to begin gathering and meaningfully organize and display the data (most of which is available but in disparate locations and owners), feasibility obtain new data, and continuously track it along with ongoing communication strategies regarding GME’s value to our system.