Designated Institutional Officials

The Designated Institutional Officials (DIO) section is designed to provide broad-based resources for DIOs and others involved in graduate medical education at the institutional level, as well as news items and time-sensitive communications. 

Questions about Sponsoring Institutions or the ACGME Institutional Requirements should be directed to staff members. Questions about the Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) Program should be directed to CLER staff, whose contact information can be found here. Specialty-specific questions should be directed to the appropriate specialty Review Committee staff members, whose contact information can be found on the relevant specialty page, accessed from the menu under the Specialties header in the top navigation.

About Sponsoring Institutions

Every ACGME-accredited residency or fellowship program must be overseen and supported by an ACGME-accredited Sponsoring Institution. In order to receive and maintain institutional accreditation, Sponsoring Institutions must substantially comply with ACGME Institutional Requirements. Each Sponsoring Institution must identify a Designated Institutional Official (DIO) who has the authority and responsibility for oversight and administration of its programs. The ACGME’s Institutional Review Committee (IRC) assesses Sponsoring Institutions’ substantial compliance with ACGME standards through periodic accreditation reviews.

Parallel to the accreditation process, the ACGME’s Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) assesses the resident and fellow learning environment within each Sponsoring Institution. The feedback provided by the CLER program is designed to improve how clinical sites engage resident and fellow physicians in learning to provide safe, high quality patient care. More information about CLER may be found here.

Sponsoring Institution 2025 (SI2025) is a new ACGME initiative that will develop a future vision for ACGME-accredited institutional sponsors of graduate medical education (GME) programs. More information about SI2025 may be found here.