| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
|
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||||
What's the matter, Bunky? Are you feeling overworked? What happened to the good life in diagnostic radiology? Where are all these requests for our services coming from? Have all those days and weekends on call finally gotten to you? Is there any relief in sight?
It is now official; the radiology job market has turned around. In fact, the job market seems to have gone from tight to wide open in less than 18 months. The floodgates have opened; the pent-up demand for new hires has broken loose.
To the hard-working practicing radiologists, this news comes as no surprise. Most radiologists are busier than ever, and those seeking new associates have found it more difficult to attract them. Demand exceeds supply. Radiologists completing training, be it residencies or fellowships, have a plethora of job opportunities and experience little difficulty in securing what they believe to be suitable positions. Junior and mid-level faculty have been leaving academia to take positions in private practice. Fellowship positions have gone begging because more and more resident graduates have found it possible to go directly into desirable private practice situations without the prerequisite of fellowship training. Fewer radiologists are entering academic practice.
In this issue Covey et al. [1] present evidence of the job market crunch from an unexpected source, an analysis of advertisements for jobs in radiology. It is such a simple and straightforward assessment of the job market situation that it is actually startling. Read it and see if you don't agree. Right here in the Journal, you'll find anecdotal confirmation of these authors' findings. The classified advertising in the AJR for job positions has undergone a remarkable increase over the past year. We now commonly have 12-15 pages of such ads in each issue. Because of these ads, our Journal is heavier and thicker. As with the old adage, "One man's misfortune is another man's profit," classified ads are now a significant source of income for the Journal.
The sinusoidal swings in demand for radiologists over variable periods of time seem to be a regular feature of the radiology job market-place: on-again, off-again, wide open to tight, and then wide open again. The impetus for decreases in demand for radiology positions is based to a large extent on the fear of potential or proposed, if not actual, changes in reimbursement for services or the threat of potential or proposed, if not actual, caps or restrictions placed on demands for services: for instance, implementation of Medicare, implementation of the resource-based relative value scale (RBRVS), and the initiatives of managed care to limit the services rendered.
On the other hand, the impetus for increased demand for radiologists is a combination of the realization that those health care changes implemented are tolerable and an awareness that many of the much-feared proposals, such as the Clintons' plans for revision of our health care system, either have not or will not come to fruition. Couple all that with the seemingly inexorable influx of new and improved imaging technologies and ever-broadening clinical applications and you unleash a demand for additional diagnostic radiologists. Radiology groups find it necessary to add new hires to fill the increased demand for their services.
Supply and demand for radiologists is subject to a free market. Changes take place and adjustments occur. Radiologists are used to it by now. However, there are those who consider the vicissitudes of a free market disorderly. And intermittent attempts are made to "tidy-up" the marketplace. Governmental bureaucrats have a particular penchant for such control: they, the anointed, wish to give counsel to the unwashed.
Nowhere has this penchant been better demonstrated than in the mother of all projections, the United States Department of Health and Human Services Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee report, better known as the GMENAC report, published in 1980 [2, 3]. According to the projections contained in this report, there would be a 34% oversupply of radiologist in the year 2000, essentially one third more radiologists than necessary this very year! Needless to say, the GMENAC report was a little off the mark. Looking through the murky glass of projection affords one only a dimly lit and poorly formed image of the future. We should be thankful that no stringent measures based on these projections were put in place to reduce the number of radiologists, or radiology would really be in a mess. The free market may be messy, but it's not that messy!
Radiology is more important to the practice of medicine and surgery than ever before. Imaging is increasingly both more specific and more sensitive and is now an essential ingredient in modern medical care. At the same time, imaging is more labor-intensive than ever before. Training programs in radiology should be expanded, not contracted, to meet the ever-expanding needs for imaging services.
Under our present and foreseeable future circumstances, we certainly don't need fewer radiologists. We need more. Of course, you don't have to take my word for it. As Covey et al. [1] tell us, it is really quite simple: just turn to the back of our Journal and count the job ads.
References
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  F. M. Hall The Radiology Job Market: Good News and Bad News for Residents Am. J. Roentgenol., April 1, 2001; 176(4): 1078 - 1078. [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
