Senate proposal to increase pain workforce

[cluelessme7]

Opioid Workforce Act of 2021 Introduced in Senate

Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced the Opioid Workforce Act of 2021 in the Senate on April 27.

www.aamc.org

What are people's thoughts on this new Bill? In short, the bill will supposedly be active from 2024-2028, increasing the number of training spots in pain management (which fields this will include is unclear, whether its strictly pain management fellowships or other residencies that are involved in pain management such as PM&R, psych, etc). The planned number of spots to be increased is quite drastic, given that pain management is a small field.

Seems that this will definitely have significant implications on the job market and saturation going forward. Currently each year there are ~ 350 spots for pain fellowships, unsure how a > 100% increase would be sustainable while also meeting all the case exposure requirements under ACGME.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[PMR2008]

I would rather have more trained pain physicians versus mid levels or primary care physicians managing pain. The older population is growing and pain management will continue to be cheaper than surgery.

 

[j4pac]

Wouldn’t it be better to put money toward resources that help explain why Americans are in more pain than the rest of the world? Ya know...an ounce of prevention. Then you may not need all of those pain doctors

 

[9732doc]

Wouldn’t it be better to put money toward resources that help explain why Americans are in more pain than the rest of the world? Ya know...an ounce of prevention. Then you may not need all of those pain doctors

Yes. And thankfully this is something congress actually did and is still doing. Helping to End Addiction Long-term. Nearly 1 billion was spent in the last few years. It's just a tough problem and will likely take a very long time to make a dent.

 

[sloh]

Not sure there is a pain physician shortage issue. I know a lot of pain fellows finishing fellowship who are having a difficulty finding jobs in SoCal, much less well paying jobs. We can certainly make an argument for a gentle undersupply—but flooding the market with clinicians whether they be MD/DO's or APP's will only worsen job security and income if supply exceeds demand.

There was a good discussion on this in the rads forum:

https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/what-is-causing-the-resurgence-of-the-radiology-job-market.1436651/page-2#post-22728278

"The main point is that in this age of health care you can sink yourself with oversupply, but you can’t protect yourself with undersupply because big health systems are absolutely motivated to “innovate” you right out of existence.

It kind of seems like a gentle undersupply would be the best way to go."

 

[j4pac]

Not sure there is a pain physician shortage issue. I know a lot of pain fellows finishing fellowship who are having a difficulty finding jobs in SoCal, much less well paying jobs. We can certainly make an argument for a gentle undersupply—but flooding the market with clinicians whether they be MD/DO's or APP's will only worsen job security and income if supply exceeds demand.

There was a good discussion on this in the rads forum:

https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/what-is-causing-the-resurgence-of-the-radiology-job-market.1436651/page-2#post-22728278

"The main point is that in this age of health care you can sink yourself with oversupply, but you can’t protect yourself with undersupply because big health systems are absolutely motivated to “innovate” you right out of existence.

It kind of seems like a gentle undersupply would be the best way to go."

The problem that I see is that there are plenty of pain physicians for patients that need lucrative procedures with good paying insurance. There are very few pain physicians for fibromyalgia patients on medicaid. The access to care issue is largely intentional by pain providing practices....and increasing the number of providers is not going to fix that presumed problem.

Most of my patient's don't necessarily need a pain physician...then need pain rehabilitation. The problem is that there is one decent pain rehabilitation program within my area...and a tiny percentage of patients have the insurance types needed to qualify, and of those that can get in...the wait time is significant. That would be my choice of how to dump money...put it into multidisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation programs/fibromyalgia clinics throughout out country. Make it more lucrative to open such programs...and find ways to get insurance to cover. If that was to occur...the current number of pain physicians in our country MAY BE ABLE TO GO DOWN.