Match time: How Philly-area residency programs fared in last year’s match, by the numbers

Hundreds of students graduating from Philadelphia-area medical schools received an email Monday morning telling them if they secured a spot in a residency program. Now they have to wait until Friday at noon to learn the details of the hospital and city where they will spend the next phase of their clinical training.

The dramatic week marks the culmination of a monthslong process known as the match. The results are a signal of the prestige of training programs and desirability of medical specialties.

Roughly 1,400 of the nation’s 40,000 residency spots are in Philadelphia-area hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

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The Inquirer analyzed match results data from the National Residency Match Program, the nonprofit that administers the matching process, to get a view of how local residency programs fared last year.

A total of 42,952 applicants submitted ranked lists to compete for one of the 40,375 residency spots nationwide.

One-thousand three hundred ninety-five of those residency slots were in the Philadelphia area.

Eighty-six local residency slots in 27 Philly-area programs were unmatched as the first round of results were released at this point last year.

That means that applicants matched in roughly 94% of slots in the region.

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Just because the initial match results did not yield a match does not mean the slot went unfilled.

The period between the release of the initial match results, or the match notice, on Monday and the official reveal of Match Day on Friday allows for the “scramble,” the term used to describe a program to connect students who didn’t match and programs with unclaimed spots.

The scramble played an important role for residency programs in emergency medicine last year.

In the Philly region, 26 unclaimed slots were in emergency medicine programs, a specialty that has struggled nationally to attract interest in recent years.

Philadelphia-area programs, including at a few throughout the Jefferson Health system, had to recruit residents over match week. And they saw success. All of the 26 unmatched emergency medicine spots were filled during the scramble.

Another 23 of the unmatched spots occurred in one-year, stepping-stone programs designed as a prerequisite for a full residency, or a way to strengthen a resume before applying to a full residency. These are known as “preliminary” and “transitional” programs, and nationally they also have a lower match rate.

Together, emergency medicine programs and preliminary programs accounted for half of the unmatched spots in the Philly region last year.

Einstein Health, which is owned by Jefferson, and Temple University Hospital each had the highest number of unmatched spots with 15 each.

Einstein matched only 10 out of 22 spots in emergency medicine in its two training locations, a main hospital in North Philadelphia and an affiliated hospital in Montgomery County’s East Norriton.

Temple didn’t match any of its 11 preliminary surgical spots or one preliminary OB/GYN spot. (Temple matched all six full-residency OB/GYN spots and six full-residency general surgery spots.)

Cooper Health/Rowan had 12 unmatched spots and Jefferson 11.

Here’s a look at the match results for all Philly-area residency programs: