63% of radiologists, other docs surveyed seeing physician applicant shortages
About 63% of radiologists and other docs recently surveyed said they are facing a shortage of qualified applicants for physician jobs in their market.
That’s according to new poll numbers from Medscape, published Friday. Conversely, about 52% of doc respondents said they are seeing shortages of nurses and physician assistants, while 56% cited the same for support staff.
The shortage was more acutely felt with job openings for primary care (56%) versus medical specialists (44%), the news website reported Aug. 22.
“Even with the team-based approach to care employed by many healthcare facilities today, physicians remain the key to healthcare delivery. You almost can’t have too many of them, and they are always in strong demand,” Jeff Decker, president of the physician and leadership solutions division at AMN Healthcare, told Medscape. “Primary care physicians are gatekeepers to the system and ‘feed’ specialists, so there is a strong need for their services. However, in our experience, both primary care physicians and specialists are in short supply.”
The findings are based on a survey of 1,001 U.S. physicians across over two dozen specialties, including about 20 radiologists, conducted in March and April. About 69% of docs surveyed said their workplace is currently trying to hire full- or part-time physicians, versus 24% who said no. Around 67% of respondents said their organization is seeking between 1 and 3 physicians, the most popular answer.
Meanwhile, 69% said their workplace is trying to hire either full- or part-time physicians across multiple locations. Among those who were aware, most said five or fewer physicians were being sought across various offices, Medscape found.
“The need to hire across multiple locations highlights the strain on healthcare systems to meet growing patient demand,” Decker noted. “This trend is driven by a mix of factors: expansion into underserved areas, turnover from pandemic-era burnout and efforts to restore pre-pandemic staffing levels.
“Multisite hiring also reflects the consolidation of healthcare practices, where larger systems aim to standardize care across regions while addressing workforce gaps,” he added.
Respondents are worried there is no end in sight to workforce challenges. Approximately 42% of those polled aren’t confident material progress will be made in the next decade to address the shortage, versus 29% who were uncertain and 16% who said “very confident.”
Read more about the results from Medscape 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.