To be honest with you, they’re probably more concerned with how they’re gonna put food on the table than to set up interview days. Pain procedures are elective, reimbursement has been decreasing for years, and even when COVID is completely over next year, during the resultant recession there will be low demand as well. Not to mention the GUARANTEED changes in health care which will result in further declines in reimbursement for Pain procedures. In other words, you should be a lot more worried about what Pain’s future holds than not having interview days.
Current pain fellow here. IMG grad and PM&R trained. Just wanted to drop some knowledge facts for you guys/gals since it seems there is always a lot of anxiety during this time and incorrect information flying around..
1.) Peterluger you are incorrect with that whole spiel. Don't know what your "deal" is but I just finished interviewing for pain jobs across the country. While it is true some private practices are furloughing their staff due to large overhead and minimal income coming in as most of the procedures are elective that is not the case everywhere. There are practices still hiring during this time and are offering generous signing bonuses ranging from $25k-30k with salaries ranging from $275k-450k based on location. There are also plenty of academic institutions still looking to hire as well (I just signed on with an academic institution). All my co-fellows and former co-residents that went into pain currently have signed with places and are going to get paid well. Will this be the case if this lasts another year? Hard to say but the most likely situation is that they would likely have to take a pay cut. Currently our attendings are fine because we are still doing telemedicine and Medicare/insurers are reimbursing at the same rate as a regular clinic visit. So don't worry, you will all have jobs IF you get a fellowship spot.
2.) Future of pain? It's always hard to predict but that's the case with any specialty. But historically if you look at reimbursement rates for the various procedures we do on ASIPP's website it has been steady and there has no major decline with any of them. If anything this is a great time to go into pain as neuromodulation is becoming a bigger part of managing chronic pain. Patients do well and reimbursements are quite generous. So in summary future of pain is bright and reimbursements won't take a hit because baby boomers are now hitting retirement and overall low back pain and back pain itself is the number 2 reason why patients come to see a doctor.
3.) Don't focus too much on the number of interviews you guys/gals get. I know many people my year that I met on the interview trail and my colleagues that got 10-14 interviews and did not match. Myself and many others only got 4-6 and still ended up matching. Unlike residency where there is more of a "guarantee" with having 10 interviews it's not necessarily the case with pain.
4.) Most programs won't send a rejection email unless they are sure they have the people they want to interview and are confident that they will fill their program with the ones they are interviewing. Often times these programs are confident because they have more internal applicants than spots.
5.) In my year >90% of programs only sent out one round of interviews. I heard this being the case in prior years. So don't hold your breath if you didn't get an interview initially because it's unlikely you'll get one from that program and even if you do you'll be very low on their rank list. This doesn't mean you shouldn't reach out. I reached out towards the end of interview season in July/August and got 1 interview that way. I did not end up matching at that program however.
6.) In terms of what programs look for is mainly personality/fit and work ethic. Surprisingly there are still many of us who make it through med school and residency that are lazy with/without crappy personalities. How do they weed out the ones that aren't both or either. They look at letters of rec to see what is said and not said in those letters and they also look at your CV to see what you've done in your spare time. It's hard to do original research during residency but they do notice if you made an effort to publish case reports and present at conferences. These two things is what makes you stand out and match with a program. And I know because I've asked PD's at conferences this past year being a fellow and my own PD. Obviously they do screen initially based on if you're US MD, US DO, IMG, or FMG and it's typically in that order and USMLE Step 1 score. Some programs do take into account your ITE score but if you're Anesthesia not PM&R. UPenn for instance won't grant you an interview unless you're 90th percentile on your Anesthesia basic exam.
I know this is long-winded but hopefully I could impart some knowledge and dispell some of the rumors on this board. Why am I wasting time to respond it's cause I've had to self-quarantine due to testing positive for COVID and am extremtly bored after exhausting Netflix's catalogue of shows. I'll be checking in periodically so if you guys have any other questions would be happy to answer them for you.