To ease the administrative burden on hospitals and academic medical centers, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) is introducing a new accreditation model. Dubbed the Next Accreditation System (NAS), the new process will be rolled out starting in July 2013.  Sponsoring institutions and residency programs nevertheless must continue to stay abreast of the ACGME’s current rules – including tools and best practices for preparing Program Information Forms – as well as the new NAS requirements, which will not be fully implemented until July 2014.  In “The ACGME Accreditation System: Today and Tomorrow,” an article published March 7th in University Business, Nili Yolin of Mintz Levin’s Health Law Practice compares the current process-based accreditation system with NAS, which is an outcomes-based system, and looks at what the changes will mean for sponsoring institutions and GME programs