‘Remarkable’: Radiologists’ turnover odds double in short span
Radiologist turnover has risen sharply in recent years, coinciding with a period of rising workloads, according to new Neiman Health Policy Institute research published Tuesday morning.
Between 2020 and 2022, the adjusted odds of a radiologist leaving a practice were nearly twice as high (odds ratio of 1.96) as seven years prior. Turnover rates were greater for female rads, those living in metro areas, and among early career physicians, experts wrote in JACR.
Overall, the turnover rate leapt from 5.3% in 2013 to 8.5% in 2022, or about 61%, Neiman researchers noted. Odds also were lower in academic and larger practices, based on Medicare provider file data. Researchers involved in the analysis called the near-doubling turnover odds in such a short period of time “remarkable.”
“Our results provide a compelling foundation to explore how practice setting may differentially affect turnover for men and women,” lead author Jay Parikh, MD, a professor with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, said in a Feb. 24 statement from the policy institute.
Parikh and colleagues estimated radiologist workload based on a 5% sample of fee-for-service Medicare claims from Inovalon Insights and extrapolated results across the whole population. Altogether, the sample included over 39,000 radiologists covering nearly 281,000 practice years. Authors found that the turnover rate decreased as workload increased until reaching a “tipping point” in which it began to increase. This inflection point appeared to be about one-third lower for academic radiologists (8,820 work RVUs) versus those working in other practice settings (13,380 wRVUs).
“Our results do not inform why this difference exists, but perhaps increasing clinical demands that crowd out teaching and research may reduce the appeal of academic practice,” study co-author Eric Christensen, PhD, a health economist and research director with the Neiman Institute, said in a statement.
Turnover odds were about 6% higher for female versus male radiologists and 12% for those in metro areas while 9% lower for teaching rads. Academia’s lower turnover rate occurred, despite academic practices being disproportionately female and in urban areas, Parikh added. Across the entire sample, the tipping point appeared to be about 12,940 wRVUs.
Researchers believe their findings are important in understanding factors that influence radiologists’ decisions to change jobs, providing “actionable insights for health systems aiming to strengthen retention and support a stable radiology workforce.” One takeaway is that rads want more work to stay content but only up to a certain point.
“It may be that, at lower workload levels, a radiologist’s job satisfaction increases as workload increases making the job more engaging and financially rewarding. However, there are limits—consistent with the concept of a tipping point—where the disadvantages of additional work outweigh the benefits,” Parikh said in the statement.
Read much more, including potential study limitations, in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
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.