Pediatric residency training in an era of managed care: an introduction to proceedings of a national conference.

On May 4, 1996, a conference sponsored jointly by the Division of Medicine of the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Ambulatory Pediatric Association brought together pediatric educators from academic medical centers and managed care organizations to address the challenges and opportunities for pediatric residency training, given current trends toward increasing managed care for children. This supplement is designed to bring the issues discussed there to a broader audience of pediatricians and educators. The contributions are written by the participants of that conference, with invited commentaries to add additional perspectives on each topic. The papers were reviewed by an editorial board of leaders in pediatric education with experience in relevant areas. This introduction describes the impetus for the conference and highlights a number of critical issues facing pediatric postgraduate training that are presented in greater depth in the contributions that follow. Finally, this paper summarizes the recommendations of the conference for meeting the challenges of training pediatricians in these areas.