Private practice work makes up majority of radiology job openings

Three out of four radiology job postings are for private practices, according to a new study published by the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

Anand M. Prabhakar, MD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital department of radiology, and colleagues called the current radiology job market “daunting,” pointing to concerns shared by many graduates as they enter the workforce.

“Graduates of residency and fellowship programs know both anecdotally and experientially that securing an ideal job is challenging if not impossible,” Prabhakar and colleagues wrote. “Drivers of this environment are theorized to reflect decreased utilization of imaging, increased efficiency of radiologists in the workplace, deferred radiologist retirements, and the billions in Medicare cuts to radiology since 2006.”

Wanting to dive deeper into the details, the authors tracked and analyzed job postings on the American College of Radiology (ACR) Jobs Board—“the dominant repository for job postings”— from June 2014 to June 2015.

Overall, they tracked more than 1,700 job openings. More than 75 percent of the jobs were in private practice, while more than 16 percent were in academics, and more than 7 percent were categorized as “other.”

In addition, 86 percent of those jobs were in diagnostic radiology, 13.5 percent were in interventional radiology, and 0.5 percent were in administration.

The authors also noted that the most frequently required specialty was breast imaging, which made up 17 percent of the job openings.

“Comparing our study—based on 2014-2015 data—with the 2014 ACR survey, suggests that breast imaging needs have grown,“ the authors wrote. “In addition, an analysis we performed suggests that 30 percent of employers looking for non-breast imaging radiologists nonetheless express interest in candidates who are willing to perform breast imaging. In short, trainees may benefit from breast imaging training regardless of subspecialty choice.”

Prabhakar and colleagues broke the data down by geography as well. Eleven percent of all openings were based in California, while New York and Pennsylvania each represented 7 percent of the openings.

“For those looking to move to populous and often popular geographies such as California or New York, they may find reassuring the sheer number of jobs available in these states,” the authors wrote. “However, job seekers should account as well for jobs indexed to population, as this is more likely to give a sense for job-seeking competitiveness. Seen through this lens, states such as California and New York suddenly seem to have a tighter job market.”

Once indexed per million population, the states with the highest job rates were Nevada (14.1), Washington, D.C. (13.7), and Hawaii (13.4).

The authors added that money was rarely mentioned in job openings. Only 7 percent of jobs mentioned a specific salary, and the range of listed annual salaries ranged from $98,967 to $1,000,000.