Future job prospects for rads

[Taurus]

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Someone was telling me that the job prospects for pathologist weren't so great, relative to other medical specialties. If radiologists and pathologists do similar work in that they interpret images, why are radiologists in demand and pathologists not? I'm guessing that everything is imaged these days and you need radiologists to interpret them while path slides are made only if tissue is collected. But do you guys think that radiology will reach a point like path in terms of job prospects?

 

[f_w]

Predicting the job market for medical specialists any further than 6 months in advance has a high potential to make one look like a fool.

In radiology, we have learned this the hard way. in 1994 a guy by the name of Sunshine at the american college of radiology predicted a tremendous oversupply of radiologists for 2000. By his ill informed predictions, radiologists would be driving taxicabs. The prediction from his paper was perpetuated throughout the community and in part related to this erroneous information the number of training positions was slashed.

Due to a number of factors, the exact opposite of the prediction happened and in the early 2000s, a tremendous shortage of radiologists developed. The SAME author now predicted that this shortage of radiologists would remain for decades to come.

And again, he proved to be wrong. The shortage has abated in only a few years, and except for the low-end academic sector and rural practices, the market has adjusted.

There are a number of factors playing into the future demand for radiologists, nobody can predict which of these factors will prevail:

Increasing demand
- higher reliance by clinicians on imaging studies
- more sophisticated cross-sectional imaging modalities requiring more manpower to interpret
- increased delivery of healthcare in emergency rooms with their high reliance on imaging studies
- more sophisticated oncologic protocols relying on imaging data for therapy decisions
- expected increase of imaging intensive malignancies with the aging of the baby boomers

Decreasing demand
- decreasing willingness of goverment and insurers to pay for imaging services, significant cuts in reimbursement in recent deficit reduction act
- self-referred clinician imaging
- medicare going broke
- increased productivity of individual radiologists through PACS and optimized clerical support

 

[rs2006]

Hi
How bad were the recent medicare paycuts?-- was it so bad that it might impact the radiology job market? Any thoughts would be appreciated. thanks.

Predicting the job market for medical specialists any further
than 6 months in advance has a high potential to make one look like a fool.

In radiology, we have learned this the hard way. in 1994 a guy by the name of Sunshine at the american college of radiology predicted a tremendous oversupply of radiologists for 2000. By his ill informed predictions, radiologists would be driving taxicabs. The prediction from his paper was perpetuated throughout the community and in part related to this erroneous information the number of training positions was slashed.

Due to a number of factors, the exact opposite of the prediction happened and in the early 2000s, a tremendous shortage of radiologists developed. The SAME author now predicted that this shortage of radiologists would remain for decades to come.

And again, he proved to be wrong. The shortage has abated in only a few years, and except for the low-end academic sector and rural practices, the market has adjusted.

There are a number of factors playing into the future demand for radiologists, nobody can predict which of these factors will prevail:

Increasing demand
- higher reliance by clinicians on imaging studies
- more sophisticated cross-sectional imaging modalities requiring more manpower to interpret
- increased delivery of healthcare in emergency rooms with their high reliance on imaging studies
- more sophisticated oncologic protocols relying on imaging data for therapy decisions
- expected increase of imaging intensive malignancies with the aging of the baby boomers

Decreasing demand
- decreasing willingness of goverment and insurers to pay for imaging services, significant cuts in reimbursement in recent deficit reduction act
- self-referred clinician imaging
- medicare going broke
- increased productivity of individual radiologists through PACS and optimized clerical support

 

[ttumed]

Wouldn't worry too much about it. I think there will always be jobs and you will never be poor according to American standards. It's more about what you like to do day in and day out. Just go off that and you can't loose.

 

[f_w]

How bad were the recent medicare paycuts?-- was it so bad that it might impact the radiology job market? Any thoughts would be appreciated. thanks.

The recent cuts mainly affected radiology groups and other medical providers who own independent imaging centers. It is difficult to get a handle on how much the cuts actually are, but from what I can gather it is in the 20-30% range for the technical side of the fees.

The impact on the market will not be immediate, it will stunt the growth in the outpatient imaging sector a bit and long term reduce job prospects due to decreased incomes.

The professional fees have been going down for the past 4 years or so. This is related to the sustainable growth rate factor built into the medicare financing formula. Only through annual last minute acts of congress the professional fees have been saved from theses statutory reductions. If AMA can't convince congress every year to grant these 'fixes' of the flawed system, professional fees will go down.

 

[Docmike2006]

Job security is there - clinicians nowadays want to document everything. Financial security is another story.