Reported Visa Acceptance or Sponsorship for Non-US Citizen Applicants to US Internal Medicine Residency Programs.

Background: Non-US citizen international medical graduates (IMGs) make up a significant proportion of the physician workforce, especially in physician shortage areas and specialties. IMGs face barriers matriculating in US residency programs. Whether a program reports accepting J-1 visas and sponsoring H-1B visas influences their decision to apply, it remains unclear which institutional factors shape programs' likelihood to consider visa-seeking applicants. Objective: We investigated factors associated with programs reporting accepting J-1 visas or sponsoring H-1B visas for non-citizen applicants in internal medicine, the specialty most sought after by IMGs. Methods: We performed multivariable regression analyses using publicly available data to identify characteristics associated with reported visa acceptance (J-1 and or H-1B). Covariates included university affiliation, program size, program type (academic, university-affiliated community, or community), and Doximity reputation ranking. Results: We identified 419 programs: 267 (63.7%) reported accepting J-1 visas. Among programs that accepted J-1 visas, 65.6% (n=175) accepted only J-1 visas while 34.5% (n=92) sponsored H-1B and accepted J-1 visas. Ranking in the third quartile (vs first quartile) was associated with lower odds of accepting J-1 (aOR 0.12; 95% CI 0.02-0.87; Conclusions: While prior evidence shows that most internal medicine programs that substantially enroll IMGs are low ranking, high-ranking internal medicine programs are paradoxically more likely to report that they consider and sponsor visa-seeking applicants.