Newly Elected ASTRO President Opened RadOnc Residency Program in last 5 years

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Chartreuse Wombat

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Chartreuse Wombat said:

Dr. Geraldine Jacobson elected as future Chair of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) - American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) - American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO)

Geraldine Jacobson, MD, MPH, MBA, FASTRO, will begin her term as President-elect of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) in October 2020
www.astro.org www.astro.org

Hard to imagine what her view on further expansion is...
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Yup, racial justice is clearly the #1 priority for our field. No doubt about it - not contributing to the cure of cancer!

"In her tenure as President-elect and eventual Chair of ASTRO, Dr. Jacobson will draw on her advanced education in public health and business to address priority areas including diversity and racial justice within the oncology workforce, the impact of COVID-19 on cancer care, and patient health equity."
 
When I'm talking to chairs who lead expanding residency programs centers in major cities, I hear "They need more of the best trained rad oncs from major centers for the rural parts of the country since we hear there's an undersupply there."

Then when I talk to chairs from more rural parts of the country, I hear "We need to train more rad oncs within our underserved area so they will stay in rural parts of the country and better understand the unique challenges of those communities."

So in her case, I'm sure it's the latter.
 
RickyScott said:
It is an hour or so drive from
Upitt/Allegheny
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And if that wasn't enough, Penn State thinks they need one too for central PA


The new Department of Radiation Oncology is developing a residency program, as well as training programs in medical physics, which will increase the number of health professionals to care for our own patients while addressing the shortage of these kind of experts across the nation.
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How is this not gaslighting? It's the very definition of it.

Oh, you think there's an over supply problem? Let's elect as chair the dept head of a brand new program (with 2 linacs at one site, and one linac at a "satellite") within 90 miles of two pre existing programs (UPMC, Allegheny) in the middle of massive expansion of residents with decreasing radiation indications/fractions. The gas light is not on, you're the crazy one.
 
Neuronix said:
When I'm talking to chairs who lead expanding residency programs centers in major cities, I hear "They need more of the best trained rad oncs from major centers for the rural parts of the country since we hear there's an undersupply there."
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Why in holy hell can they talk fixing undersupply, and doing expansion, and it be OK; but illegal/antitrust to talk oversupply and retracting spots. It’s only antitrust if it’s anti- one’s position, I trust?
 
scarbrtj said:
Why in holy hell can they talk fixing undersupply, and doing expansion, and it be OK; but illegal/antitrust to talk oversupply and retracting spots. It’s only antitrust if it’s anti- one’s position, I trust?
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Duh...i mean hallahan didn't sit there and openly talk about cutting faculty salaries in the red journal for nothing
 
As one sdner likes to put it: tragedy of the commons. Every program wants more residents independently and no central agency regulates supply and demand. They're not colluding in this, it's just in most chairs best interests to have more residents.

Dr. Golden in our other thread has invited us to sit on committees. I know this because I do sit on committees. In the last 5 years I've had discussions with almost every scarop lead and a bunch of other chairs and PDs.

If anyone mentions job market to them, a willful ignorance kicks in, and like any other politician they change the subject or say something that isn't true then dominate the discussion until you're out of time.

Again, the only reason we're getting any notice is because application numbers are down. SDN gets the blame for that in their minds...

This isn't everyone obviously. Just painting in broad strokes here.
 
Neuronix said:
As one sdner likes to put it: tragedy of the commons. Every program wants more residents independently and no central agency regulates supply and demand. They're not colluding in this, it's just in most chairs best interests to have more residents.

Dr. Golden in our other thread has invited us to sit on committees. I know this because I do sit on committees. In the last 5 years I've had discussions with almost every scarop lead and a bunch of other chairs and PDs.

If anyone mentions job market to them, a willful ignorance kicks in, and like any other politician they change the subject or say something that isn't true then dominate the discussion until you're out of time.

Again, the only reason we're getting any notice is because application numbers are down. SDN gets the blame for that in their minds...

This isn't everyone obviously. Just painting in broad strokes here.
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It must have been like trying to discuss slavery with the southern states in Congress pre-1860s.
 
I've said this before but I'm on my second read through Nassim Taleb's Skin in the Game and it's smacking me in the face the parallels here....

1. The whole radiation oncology residency expansion is so well juxtaposed with the points in the book. There is so much asymmetry in decision making - as noted above the people that benefit (chairs/existing practices potentially) are the de facto decision makers. And they only gain from more residents.

2. The people making these decisions suffer no consequences when things go wrong. There is no connection between the decisions made and the consequences of these decision. " Bureaucracy is a construction designed to maximize covering the ass of a decision-maker from the risks of the decision ."

The whole legal concern is a charade for cowards to hide behind. If this were a concern we'd see the cash cow fields like derm and plastics be sued left and right to open up residency slots. Such a case has never been decided by a judge/jury to my knowledge, so there is zero legal precedent and it's all speculation as to what the case law would be here. As scarbrtj is saying above, if they're allowed to manipulate the supply to "fix" a geographic maldistribution problem, why are they not able to manipulate supply when we have an over abundance of rad oncs? How is the simple legal argument not - we don't need rad oncs, the public health would be better served with these med students doing family medicine (insert other area of need)?

/rant
 
Mandelin Rain said:
Anti-trust was, is, and always has been the equivalent of being confronted with a fight, yelling “hey, what’s that?” while pointing to the sky, and then running away when the other guy looks up.
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I would gladly fund the legal defense with all the money I'd save if they got rid of SA-CME's.
 
The chief anti-competitive behavior in rad onc is over training physicians to drive salaries down. The chairman of Wash U admitted this in a peer reviewed journal. If one could demonstrate that Hallahan colluded with other leaders to expand residencies as a means to wage fix, it'd be a BIG story. Wash U is a private university and as such is likely exempt from FOIA requests, but many (most) other chair persons, that he may have contacted about this issue around the same time he published it in our specialty's primary journal, are not exempt from FOIA requests. Just saying.
 
Anyone see Randalls response from UK on the ASTRO forum about how he was looking for proof there was an over supply...these people just have their head in the sand.
 
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