Healthcare disparities—differences in health outcomes driven by socioeconomic status, gender, race, or ethnic and cultural background—are one of the most pressing issues in U.S. and global healthcare. A 2024 report from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions estimates that, if left unaddressed, medical costs associated with health inequities could exceed $1 trillion by 2040.
Decades of research into health disparities have shown that a more diverse, culturally competent healthcare workforce leads to better care for patients from diverse backgrounds. A 2024 Associated Press article on healthcare workforce diversity quoted Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, as saying: “Inequities are baked into our health care system, and if we address them, everyone benefits.”
Improving the diversity of the healthcare workforce, therefore, is not just about meeting a moral imperative; it’s about improving the overall quality of healthcare. In a post-affirmative action world, one strategy for diversifying the healthcare workforce is the development and support of healthcare pipeline programs, such as the Tiber Health Master of Science in Medical Sciences (MSMS) complete digital curriculum.
Pipeline programs can play a transformative role in increasing medical school diversity by providing underrepresented and disadvantaged students with the tools, experiences, and confidence to pursue careers in medicine.
Pipeline programs are initiatives designed to guide students from diverse or underprivileged backgrounds into healthcare careers. These programs can target various stages of the educational journey, from middle school and high school to college and beyond. They often include:
Our MSMS curriculum falls into this fourth category. In 2023, a team of researchers from Tiber Health and Ponce Health Sciences University (PHSU), led by Dr. Michael Mayrath, published a paper in Academic Medicine demonstrating how our pipeline program helped improve outcomes for students from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine.
Our paper described how we developed a one-year MSMS curriculum based on the first year of MD classes at PHSU, an LCME-accredited U.S. school of medicine. While many pre-medical special master’s programs take this approach, the PHSU program had one other feature: a predictive analytics model based on student performance data.
Our analytics model draws on student exam performance and categorizes their answers based on LCME standards, U.S. Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) systems and disciplines, and other criteria. The output of the model is the Tiber Performance Value (TPV), which estimates a student’s pass/fail result on the USMLE Step 1 compared to past PHSU medical school graduates. Our study looked at how well the TPV modeled actual achievement for MSMS students who went on to medical school.
In our study, we compared medical students who completed the MSMS pipeline program to students who were directly admitted to the PHSU MD program. The MSMS students had lower GPAs and MCAT scores, on average, when they entered the program: 3.46 GPA and 490.2 MCAT for pipeline students versus 3.68 GPA and 498.7 MCAT for directly admitted students.
However, once they were in medical school, the pipeline graduates achieved average USMLE Step 1 scores (as calculated before the pass-fail transition in 2022) comparable to the directly admitted MD students: 217.4 for MSMS grads, 217.8 for direct-admit MD students.
What’s more, our study showed that the TPV’s pass/fail value was a strong predictor of whether an MSMS student who moved on to medical school actually would succeed on the USMLE Step 1. (Fig. 3)
The predictive analytics data provided as part of our MSMS curriculum offers multiple benefits. First, it provides program faculty and staff with insights into student performance in real-time, allowing for early intervention that’s targeted to a student’s individual needs. Next, it provides students with motivational feedback that assures them they’re on track—or shows them where they need to improve to get back on track.
Finally, the TPV’s USMLE pass/fail prediction provides medical school admissions committees with a supplemental metric for evaluating a student’s potential for success—one that’s based on a longitudinal assessment, rather than a one-day exam performance such as the MCAT.
A diverse medical workforce is not just an ideal, it’s a necessity. The success of our innovative MSMS curriculum shows how universities can leverage predictive analytics to help empower underrepresented students who would make excellent physicians, leading to a healthcare workforce that meets every patient where they are.
Interested in learning more? Contact Tiber Health to find out how you can join our group of university partners.
