Abstract
Discrepancies in the Reporting of Pathology Workforce Data—Is Reevaluation Also Needed for Other Medical Specialties?
Highlights
The above scenario may seem improbable, a similar situation was found in the assessment of the pathology workforce, as described in this issue by Robboy et al.[1]
Through examination of the data sources, the authors discovered that the American Medical Colleges (AAMC) data had excluded most pathologists with an associated subspecialty in the American Medical Association (AMA) Masterfile; for instance, 1618 pathologists were excluded because they were listed as practicing cytopathology and not categorized under a primary training category, such as anatomic pathology
The authors found an additional discrepancy in workforce data reported by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) that concerns the classification of physicians based on subspecialty and disregards a physician’s primary specialty
Summary
The above scenario may seem improbable, a similar situation was found in the assessment of the pathology workforce, as described in this issue by Robboy et al.[1]. Through examination of the data sources, the authors discovered that the AAMC data had excluded most pathologists with an associated subspecialty in the AMA Masterfile; for instance, 1618 pathologists were excluded because they were listed as practicing cytopathology and not categorized under a primary training category, such as anatomic pathology. The authors note that a similar method may be used in reporting the workforce data for other specialties.
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