Death of Private Practice
In 2005, doctors owned more than two-thirds of all medical practices. By next year, more than 60% of physicians will be salaried employees. About a third of those will be working for hospitals, according to the American Medical Association. A review of the open job searches held by one of the country’s largest physician-recruiting firms shows that nearly 50% are for jobs in hospitals, up from about 25% five years ago.
Full op-ed by Scott Gottlieb in The Wall Street Journal.
I’ve heard a few additional reasons why doctors are increasingly salaried rather than sole proprietorships or group practices. Women make up about half of medical students and many of them find juggling both a business and seeing patients leaves too little time left for a family. The tight margins of third-party payment, the excessive overhead that results from billing multiple payers and the hassle of having to deal with a business, when your training is in medicine, makes a salaried position good by comparison.
I agree with Devon. There are a lot more women (and men, although probably to a lesser extent) coming out of medical school that aren’t interested in running a business (especially now that it’s so complicated to deal with various insurers, etc).
There is something sad about all this.