Commentary: the modesto story: back to the future?

In this issue of Academic Medicine, Broderick and Nocella describe the creative use of an educational consortium model to bring community providers together to solve the fiscal crisis faced by the local family medicine residency program, which was sponsored by a single-program sponsoring (hospital) institution. The authors of this commentary explore the specific adaptation of the educational consortium model to the previously single-program-sponsor setting, provide current numbers of accredited residency programs sponsored by educational consortia and other institutions, and speculate on the consortium model's potential to enhance community engagement and support for graduate medical education (GME) in the various settings in which GME is conducted in the United States.