Projecting the Future Pediatric Subspecialty Workforce: Summary and Recommendations.

This article summarizes the findings of a Pediatrics supplement addressing the United States workforce for 15 pediatric subspecialties. It includes results from a microsimulation model projecting supply through 2040; growth is forecasted to be uneven across the subspecialties with worsening geographic maldistribution. Although each subspecialty has unique characteristics, commonalities include (1) the changing demographics and healthcare needs of children, including mental health; (2) poor outcomes for children experiencing adverse social drivers of health, including racism; and (3) dependence on other subspecialties. Common healthcare delivery challenges include (1) physician shortages for some subspecialties; (2) misalignment between locations of training programs and subspecialists and areas of projected child population growth; (3) tension between increasing subsubspecialization to address rare diseases and general subspecialty care; (4) the need to expand clinical reach through collaboration with other physicians and advanced practice providers; (5) the lack of parity between Medicare, which funds much of adult care, and Medicaid, which funds over half of pediatric subspecialty care; and (6) low compensation of pediatric subspecialists compared with adult subspecialists. Overall, subspecialists identified the lack of a central authority to monitor and inform child healthcare provided by pediatric subspecialists as a challenge. Future research on the pediatric subspecialty workforce and the children it serves will be necessary to ensure these children's needs are met. Together, these articles provide overarching and subspecialty-specific recommendations to improve training, recruitment, and retention of a diverse workforce, implement innovative models of care, drive policy changes, and advise future research.

Child Health and the Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Workforce: 2020-2040.

In 2022, 3.7 million children were born in the United States, of whom ∼600 000 received care from a neonatologist. The dramatic growth of the neonatal-perinatal medicine (NPM) workforce from 375 in 1975 to 5250 in 2022 has paralleled exploding clinical demand. As newborn medicine continues to push the limits of gestational viability and medical complexity, the NPM workforce must advance in numbers, clinical capability, scientific discovery, and leadership. This article, as part of an American Board of Pediatrics Foundation-sponsored supplement that is designed to project the future of the pediatric subspecialty workforce, features a discussion of the NPM workforce's history and current status, factors that have shaped its current profile, and some plausible scenarios of the workforce's needs and configuration in the future. In the article, we use an analytical model that forecasts the growth trajectory of the neonatologist workforce from 2020 through 2040. The model uses recent data on the number of neonatologists and clinical work equivalents per 100 000 children and projects future workforce supply under several theoretical scenarios created by modifying key baseline parameters. The predictions of this model confirm the need for a greater sustainable clinical capacity of the NPM workforce. Several future trends indicate that there may be geographic shortages of neonatologists, similar to expected shortages in other pediatric subspecialties. We do not address what an appropriate target for workforce size should be with the model or this article because the current and projected geographic variability in the NPM workforce and risk-appropriate care suggest that a uniform answer is unlikely.