Child Psychiatrist Surplus?

[Techmed07]

https://bhw.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/bhw/nchwa/projections/psychiatrists-2018.pdf

Looks like there will be a surplus of Child Psychiatrists in the coming years..thoughts?

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[Bartelby]

I have never heard about this before, and current listings suggest that pretty much everywhere is desperate for child psychiatrists. Do you know why they are estimating an 80% growth in the supply of child psychiatrists?

 

[PikminOC]

Are they factoring in nurses and psychologist who will prescribe for kids 6 and above?

I will need a child fellowship to do that.

 

[splik]

The data does not say there will be a surplus of child psychiatrists. It says there is likely a relative lack of demand for child psychiatrists compared to need because people have given up trying! This underestimates the demand. Additionally, the CAP field is younger than for psychiatry, and thus fewer retirements/deaths are expected (only about 10%) whereas more than half of current psychiatrists will be dead/retired by 2030. Meanwhile over 300 new child psychiatrists are being trained each yr, which is where their estimates for the increase comes from.

 

[MrFlyGuy]

I thought a child psychiatrist was almost impossible to find? The problem as how I see it is nurse practitioners commonly take on child and adolescent patients without any additional training. While a child and adolescent psychiatrist is the gold standard I much rather a general psychiatrist seeing my nephew than a nurse practitioner..

 

[Merovinge]

If you take a look at their data, they expect roughly 10k new psychiatrists from 2016-2030 and 5k new CAP from 2016-2030. That would mean for every 3 adult residents, 1 goes into child fellowship from 2016-2030 unless their is somehow an explosive increase in Peds --> CAP portal programs. Is this the actual data at present date?

 

[TexasPhysician]

Covid article? If parents do their jobs, kids aren’t bullied, no one needs to focus on their limited grades from online schoolwork, no social situations to worry about, and kids play video games constantly, the need for CAP may decrease and peds endo may increase in the short term.

 

[ace_inhibitor111]

They updated this in their recent projection. I think the surplus is only ~500 now

 

[clozareal]

They updated this in their recent projection. I think the surplus is only ~500 now

You're right. 640 to be exact.

https://bhw.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/bhw/nchwa/projections/bh-workforce-projections-fact-sheet.pdf

 

[asdf123g]

Whenever I meet a fellowship trained psychiatrist, they are almost always CAP. Maybe thats not the norm. Have yet to meet forensics, neuropsych, and a few others. Not sure what thats worth.

 

[Techmed07]

Wow. Looks like CAP will oversaturate the market soon.

 

[hamstergang]

This report seems to be suggesting only a small deficit of CAPs right now. I don't have numbers on me, but that just feels inaccurate. Is any of this trustworthy?

 

[calvnandhobbs68]

This report seems to be suggesting only a small deficit of CAPs right now. I don't have numbers on me, but that just feels inaccurate. Is any of this trustworthy?

These HRSA numbers usually have no idea what they're talking about and the way they calculate supply/demand is totally opaque. Most counties in the US right now have no child psychiatrists (see below).

For instance, it's totally unclear where they're getting this 5,600 new entrants number from by 2030. There's about 300 C+A fellows each year with 296 matched applicants last year and a few positions filled outside the match. 300 x 14 (2016-2030)= 4200. So where are these other 1400 fellows coming from? They also ADD 40 positions to "changing work patterns", which means they're estimating MORE people will go from part-time to full-time...without providing any reasoning for why they suddenly think 40 FTEs worth of psychiatrists will suddenly start wanting to work full-time. Finally, as usual for most general workforce projections, it totally disregards geographic distribution. Yeah, you can probably find a child psychiatrist if you live in LA, especially if you have enough money. Not so much in Wyoming, where there are 8 C+A psychiatrists in the entire state.

It's also unclear what they're basing demand off of. People get confused by the decreasing birth rate without realizing that our overall increasing population and immigration means that the overall population of children while a lower proportion of the population overall is still increasing in ABSOLUTE numbers. The overall population of children is projected to increase by about 1.7 million by 2030:

POP1 Child population: Number of children (in millions) ages 0–17 in the United States by age, 1950–2022 and projected 2023–2050

The official website of the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. The site provides easy access to the forum's annual monitoring report, America's Children, other Forum's reports, national- and state data on children and their families collected and published by various...

www.childstats.gov

In contrast:
"At the county level, 70% of counties had no child psychiatrists in 2007 or 2016, and 20% of children lived in a county without a child psychiatrist in 2016."-> Study: 1 in 5 children lives in county without a child psychiatrist

Workforce Maps by State

www.aacap.org

Workforce Issues

www.aacap.org

 

[Techmed07]