BLS projections updated: Pharmacy still the worst-off health profession at 6% (2016-2026)

[PAtoPharm]

Right, and I guess telemedicine isn't a thing that PA's need to worry about? So confused.

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Not nearly to the same extent as pharmacists. Since so many medical specialties require in-person examinations/consultations (e.g., derm, surgery, etc), telemedicine will probably never be as great of a threat to the PA profession. At the very least, there are many, many more pharmacists who can/will be replaced by telemedicine than PAs.

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[Abby Atwood]

Not nearly to the same extent as pharmacists. Since so many medical specialties require in-person examinations/consultations (e.g., derm, surgery, etc), telemedicine will probably never be as great of a threat to the PA profession. At the very least, there are many, many more pharmacists who can/will be replaced by telemedicine than PAs.

Most BOPs have specific restrictions for remote verification. There is some possibility of remote dispensing (without a pharmacist present); however, that is generally in place to increase patients access. BOP rules, that I’m aware of, limit remote dispensing and evaluate the merits of remote dispensing at a particular site on a case by case basis.

 

[CynicalIntern]

First of all, what do the salaries of PAs working in small, mostly low-income communities in GA have to do with a what a derm practice in an affluent small city in OR is offering? There is also a PA job opening in my area (GA) offering a starting salary of $60k-$70k to work in a pediatrics office. To me, that sucks and I would never consider taking a job like that, especially when more wealthier, more affluent areas with much better payer mix demographics (I'm sure you know that outside of Atlanta, many other small/medium-sized cities in GA have payer mix demographics that approach 80-90% Medicaid/Medicare) are offering much better overall earnings/benefits/PTO packages. That is precisely one of the advantages of becoming a PA I have mentioned on here before: while there are PA jobs that suck and/or don't pay well, at the same time, it is possible to get additional training (1-year residency) and qualify for an all-around BETTER job somewhere. On the other hand (as I have also stated before), completing 1-2 additional years of training in pharmacy typically makes someone competitive for a job that pays significantly less than the retail jobs that don't (yet) require residency completion, which makes no sense to me. Extra training should = extra money/better job.

Oh, I'm sorry, have we moved the goalposts to that "affluent small sized cities" are going to be the highest paid areas instead of "small towns desperate for help?" Because I can happily adjust my above statements to "Rome, GA" "Warner Robins, GA" and "Valdosta, GA" which are all similarly sized to the 50,000 people in the link that you quoted.

Also, I don't think you understand quite the logisitics of the field you're looking into. Sure, payer mix will make a slight difference - but as the PA, you're taking ALL of the low income patients, and then you can take whatever is left when you're done with them. That is how derm works.

... And where the hell are you getting this prophecy from that I will end up working in a primary care hellhole in Moultrie when I graduate? Considering that the most recently-updated BLS stats for the PA profession project 37% growth over the next 10 years, what are you basing this on? Are you implying that you think the job market will suddenly collapse at some point within the next 3 years? Or do you think I'll end up becoming such a substandard PA that I, personally, won't have any other job prospects, even if better jobs are out there? I really am curious to know, because I could absolutely never imagine living in Moultrie, GA, would not ever be willing to move there for any profession or job, and would actually go back to school to do something else (even after completing PA school) before I ever moved there.

Yes. Also, LOL at you going back to school for the fourth time.

Oh yeah, to do your whole calculated earnings "thought experiment," I first need to know how low the new salaries offered by Walgreens (and inevitably, CVS and grocery chains) are going to be after they've determined the new salary scale following the current wage freeze.

Sure. Lets say the average of every single person you're arguing with in this thread is going to be 90,000 dollars a year. That's a huge drop, and is less than the current market Walgreens is hiring at in Georgia. Not to mention that you're arguing with people who currently HAVE jobs making 120,000 or more per year and telling them how smart you are, i think 90,000 is a perfectly adequate average. So that's 450,000 over the next 5 years. What is YOUR estimate income over the next 5 years. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Also waiting for your response on why you can't move on with your life and feel the need to talk to us instead of the PA School forums. Not exclusively. Like, at all.

 

[wagrxm2000]

Not nearly to the same extent as pharmacists. Since so many medical specialties require in-person examinations/consultations (e.g., derm, surgery, etc), telemedicine will probably never be as great of a threat to the PA profession. At the very least, there are many, many more pharmacists who can/will be replaced by telemedicine than PAs.

Hmm let's see, telemedicine will cause a huge decrease in demand seeing as your typical patient doesn't actually need to be seen. These patients can be given their refills quicker and sent on their way, taking up much less time. I would imagine most offices could reduce their staff in half after adopting this.

This would then cause everyone to flock into different fields thus having a huge impact on oh we'll say the PA field.

 

[pharm B]

Hmm let's see, telemedicine will cause a huge decrease in demand seeing as your typical patient doesn't actually need to be seen. These patients can be given their refills quicker and sent on their way, taking up much less time. I would imagine most offices could reduce their staff in half after adopting this.

Oh man, this means even more patients could be seen, meaning more prescriptions could be written.

Someone put out the word: the next hot field is pharmacy!

 

[PAtoPharm]

Oh, I'm sorry, have we moved the goalposts to that "affluent small sized cities" are going to be the highest paid areas instead of "small towns desperate for help?" Because I can happily adjust my above statements to "Rome, GA" "Warner Robins, GA" and "Valdosta, GA" which are all similarly sized to the 50,000 people in the link that you quoted.

Also, I don't think you understand quite the logisitics of the field you're looking into. Sure, payer mix will make a slight difference - but as the PA, you're taking ALL of the low income patients, and then you can take whatever is left when you're done with them. That is how derm works.



Yes. Also, LOL at you going back to school for the fourth time.



Sure. Lets say the average of every single person you're arguing with in this thread is going to be 90,000 dollars a year. That's a huge drop, and is less than the current market Walgreens is hiring at in Georgia. Not to mention that you're arguing with people who currently HAVE jobs making 120,000 or more per year and telling them how smart you are, i think 90,000 is a perfectly adequate average. So that's 450,000 over the next 5 years. What is YOUR estimate income over the next 5 years. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Also waiting for your response on why you can't move on with your life and feel the need to talk to us instead of the PA School forums. Not exclusively. Like, at all.

Oh, I have no problem acknowledging that people who are currently working now as pharmacists (or real doctors... or dentists... or PAs/NPs/AAs) make more money than I'm earning now. I'd also like for you to tell me, how would circumstance be any different if I was still enrolled in pharmacy school? I'd have at least 2.5-3.5 more years to go before I could even hope to make anything close to a full-time income, and I'd be going even deeper into debt than I will by pursuing my alternative plan.

Also, how does the fact that a currently-practicing pharmacist makes more money than me change the bleak (on multiple levels) job market and overall professional outlook for the field? In other words, why would any health professions student a damn that a retail pharmacist might currently be earning $120k when they know what the future is overwhelmingly likely to hold? You even acknowledged that $90k is a realistic future "re-calibrated salary" for retail pharmacists, which suggests that I'm not really exaggerating anything here. I don't think most people would consider "oh well, these guys graduated during the golden years of pharmacy and have done really well for themselves, so the fact that the future is going to take a 180-degree turn is irrelevant" to be a rational justification to continue to pursue pharmacy or avoid bringing up the issues themselves.

Look at it like this -- if you readily agree that the future starting salary for retail pharmacists is likely to settle somewhere around $90k (I.e., a ~$30k paycut from what it is now), then who wants to continue spending time, money, and effort in pharmacy school knowing that they'll be graduating to a substantial paycut? At this rate, the PAs you know who "only" make $140k after bonuses are going to be easily out-earning most future pharmacists by a solid $30k-$40k/year. And this isn't even taking into consideration what is likely to happen to hospital pharmacist salaries, which have always been lower than retail pharmacists' (especially here in GA, as I'm sure you're aware). Considering that hospital pharmacists already start out at $85k-$90k in GA's most ghetto medium-sized cities (e.g., Albany, Columbus, etc.), how are hospital pharmacists going to avoid a paycut when retail pharmacists will be facing such a substantial one?

Also, your statement that "yes," you think the PA job market is going to suddenly and unexpectedly tank by the time I graduate is pure conjecture on a misery-loves-company level (I.e., being inclined to insist that if it happened to pharmacists, then it just has to happen eventually to PAs as well). It doesn't carry anymore legitimacy or substance than me declaring that there really will be absolutely 0 jobs in GA within 2 years, especially considering that PAs have the most optimistic BLS outlook stats (based on the most recent updates).

 

[CynicalIntern]

1) I would like to remind you that, when you entered pharmacy school, these same BLS stats still showed pharmacy school as a positive field. Let me tell you something about BLS stats: They aren't accurate. In about 5 years, the PA field is going to be even more oversaturated than the pharmacy field.

2) I've acknowledged that PA school could very possibly be a better field for you, and congratulate you on finding something that causes your passion. I am condemning you coming back and telling people that you are SO SMART for doing so, because surely all you people in the pharmacy field can't have jobs because lol pharmacy and...wait, you do have jobs? Everyone that you're talking with? Well that can't be right based on your extensive discussions with people in the state of Georgia, because there are no jobs. So you're still smarter than all of you people who haven't had a detrimental effect on your employment yet, because you've left the field we all told you not to enter, and haven't actually gotten anywhere yet. It's the equivalent of bragging that you're a pre-season #1 in college football. It doesn't work.

3) I don't think the salaries re-calibrate to 90k a year. I use 90k as a worst-case scenario, because even if everyone in the pharmacy field only makes 90k for the next five years, they will still be ahead of you. Because, as you have continuously failed to grasp - you are FREE to discuss this with pre-pharmacy students. I would ENCOURAGE you to discuss this with pre-pharmacy students, because your story might actually teach them something. But you continuously come to the pharmacy forums and brag to current pharmacists that the field of PA is so much better than the field of pharmacy, when 1) You are not actively in the field of PA yet, 2) the people that you're bragging against are actively making a substantially better living than you now, and for the forseeable future, and anything that states otherwise is pure conjecture.

So in summary:
1) Stop boasting to us how smart you are until you get into PA school
2) Then, stop boasting to us how smart you are until you get a real-world job.
3) Then, don't boast to us about how smart you are because you're supposed to be a goddamned professional, and I can 100% promise you that at some point a pharmacist, this sad profession that you left behind, is still going to save your ass. And the fact that the pharmacist makes more or less than you or had a better or worse undergraduate resume is 100% irrelevant to the fact that they saved your ass.
4) BLS data when I entered pharmacy school in 2009 said that the pharmacy field was going to grow by like 20% in the next 10 years. This is why we don't take predictive data as guaranteed, and wait until things actually happen before utilizing the data as fact.

 

[beautifulrobot]

Maybe this is a stupid question but does 6% job growth mean 6% each year or 6% for the entire 10 years?

I did some math and if it's 6% over 10 years, we are screwed. If it is 6% every year, than there will be a huge shortage of pharmacists. Neither number makes a lot of sense. If we have only 6% more jobs 10 years from now, that means that 150,000 of the 305,000 pharmacists working today would have to retire within the next 10 years to offset the ~15,000 new grads each year. There is no way that nearly 50% of all pharmacists working today will be retired 10 years from now.

It is over 10 years. i.e. between 2016-2026, BLS projects an additional 17,600 jobs (5.6%) for the pharmacist occupation:

This video does a decent job of explaining some of the different concepts in job projections beyond just additional new positions:

 

[BidingMyTime]

What is your definition of BFE? This is a small town with over 60k people that is 10-15 minutes away from other cities. That is not my definition of BFE.

There was a thread discussing this awhile back, I forget which poster said that a town had to be greater than 300,000 to not be BFE. So people's perceptions on this vary. I would gather that most people consider towns less than <100,000 to be BFE. And if yo uare only 10 - 15 minutes away from a city, that sounds more like you are a suburb of that city.

 

[Dalteparin]

PA, I can’t help but wonder what your goal is when you post these threads. You’re not telling us anything we don’t already know; most of the pharmacists here have had to look for jobs in the last few years and are aware that the market sucks, has been sucky for awhile and will continue sucking for the forseeable future. Are you trying to stop people from going to pharmacy school? I don’t have a problem with that, but I humbly suggest that you’d have more success with that in the pre-pharmacy forum, as most everyone in this forum is either in school now or has already graduated. Are you trying to explain your choices? No need; you’ve done so before, and since we don’t know you it really isn’t any of our business. So, from genuine curiosity, what are you hoping to accomplish here?


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