By Paige Twenter

Graduates of a three-year medical school program performed as well as their four-year counterparts, according to a study of the nation's first three-year MD program for all residency programs.

In 2013, the NYU Grossman School of Medicine launched an accelerated three-year MD pathway to reduce student debt. The fast-track option is geared toward those who have already chosen their career path, as the fourth year typically is for electives in different specialties.

Since then, it has been unclear whether the shorter program was as rigorous as the traditional four-year model. To answer this question, researchers at the New York City-based school compared 136 accelerated graduates to 681 four-year graduates.

Both cohorts performed similarly during medical school and internships. On average, those who graduated in three years performed better on preclerkship exams and on Step 3 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination. The four-year graduates earned higher scores on the Steps 1 and 2 of the USMLX and on the physical exam portion of the school's comprehensive clinical skills exam, however.

In internal medicine — one of 21 residency training programs at NYU Langone — three-year and four-year interns had comparable clinical reasoning.

"Our findings suggest that accelerated curriculums offer an efficient, cost-effective way to prepare medical students for the next stage of training without compromising on the quality," Joan Cangiarella, MD, senior author of the study and the pathway's director, said in an Oct. 15 NYU Langone Health news release.