A new analysis released on Friday estimates that the U.S. shortage of radiologists and other physician specialists could climb to nearly 42,000 by 2033.
Across all types of doctors, this shortfall could reach as high as 139,000, the Association of American Medical Colleges reported in its sixth annual analysis of staffing trends. The investigation was completed by research firm IHS Markit last year, prior to the coronavirus crisis, which may have only exacerbated some of these trends.
“The gap between the country’s increasing healthcare demands and the supply of doctors to adequately respond has become more evident as we continue to combat the COVID-19 pandemic,” AAMC President and CEO David Skorton, MD, said in a June 26 statement. “The challenge of having enough doctors to serve our communities will get even worse as the nation’s population continues to grow and age.”
London-based IHS Markit reached its conclusions by analyzing supply and demand scenarios and supplementing them with other data including physician work hours and retirement trends. All told, the firm predicted a shortage ranging from 17,100 to 41,900 in the “other specialties” category that includes radiology, pathology, neurology, anesthesiology, psychiatry and others. An AAMC spokesman could not pinpoint the exact number attributed only to radiologists.
The report noted that hospitals particularly in rural areas are deploying a “patchwork” of solutions to address these shortages, expanding scope of practice laws, graduating docs early, hiring others out of retirement, and relocating physicians from other geographies. Researchers said that various factors such as the aging population—a primary driver of these shortages—and national goals to expand access to care could further increase doc demand. But other innovations in medicine, meanwhile, may potentially offset these trends.
“For example, advances in artificial intelligence could improve the productivity of radiologists, pathologists and others in detecting and diagnosing cancers and other medical conditions, possibly leading to a lower demand for these physicians to care for the existing population,” the report authors noted. “However, increasing longevity by reducing cancer deaths and other preventable deaths means more physicians will be needed in the future to care for the larger population still living—many of whom have chronic conditions to be managed.”
You can read the full 92-page analysis from the AAMC for free here.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.