Survey: 60% Of Primary Care Physicians Would Choose Another Field

medicalnewstoday.com ^ | 05 Sep 2007 | NA

[neverdem]

It's a little old, but if we get Obamacare, I expect early retirements as soon as possible. I would also expect more foreign medical graduates, nurse practitioners and physician assistants as the majority of primary care providers in the USA.

[johniegrad]

I would also expect more foreign medical graduates, nurse practitioners and physician assistants as the majority of primary care providers in the USA.

As a 20+ year physician in a large multispecialty group, I can tell you that we are seeing these things already.

[Clioman]

Yeah, life’s pretty miserable for a doctor...but they’ll keep trundling their paychecks to the bank.

[johniegrad]

Actually, the point of the article is that many of the primary care physicians won’t.

[nmh]

Wait till “universal Health care” arrives!

The employer will be the government. The government will determine what you can earn and redistribute the rest. It's also starting to be outsourced. For example, MRI's can easily be read in India. The time change is perfect. They read it over there and email the analysis back. They are U.S. trained so you can't complain about that. They're happy to learn HERE and then go home and live like kings and queens.

[LongTimeMILurker]

Look for that 22% that wouldn’t go into medicine at all to jump to over 50% with national health care. Any transition would be a disaster for years, with HUGE shortages of doctors. Of course, the media would tell us everything was fine and better than private health care. Those able to leave would leave the profession, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was immediately 25% or more of the physicians. And that would include that better paying specialties that no longer would be better paid.

[Brilliant]

This healthcare shortage was engineered by liberals who needed an excuse to socialize the healthcare system.

[a_chronic_whiner]

Not exactly, the debt they took up for their medical education will take years to repay before they get anything out of it. And the work just eats up your life like no other.

[gusopol3]

cardiologists, radiologists and other medical specialists commonly earn $300,000 or more

this is about as much as a Hospital community outreach administrator makes in Chicago (guess who?)

[RFEngineer]

“This healthcare shortage was engineered by liberals who needed an excuse to socialize the healthcare system.”

The politicians need socialized medicine to show up before Medicare/Medicaid goes belly-up as is projected in the not-so-distant future.

Expect both parties to support it, because neither has the balls to say “government can’t take care of you”.

[Mamzelle]

Back in the eighties and nineties (and under the influence of Hillarycare--which carried alot of weight though never became legislation), new MDs were encouraged to go into primary care rather than specialties. Family Practice residency programs were new and carried with them the romantic ideology of Marcus Welby who got to do everything from OBgyn to complicated internal medicine.

Then lawsuit mania hit, and they didn't get to have the fun of delivering babies anymore. "Urgent care" clinics opened up. The intimacy of FPs and their patients deteriorated through the defensiveness of the doctors who no longer trust their patients.

Primary care physicians are supplanted by the rise in PAs and NPs. A PA with lots of experience is actually more desirable to a hospital or outpatient clinic than an MD fresh out of school.

Also, talented diagnosticians in primary care devote hours of time to analysis and protocols only to watch the real $$ go to the specialist or surgeon who does the next stage of the patient care. Procedures are highly compensated--excellent diagnoses are not. Resentment of this is natural--human nature. Brains verses brawn sort of thing.

The shortage of specialists is more acute than FPs. The most pressing is the lack of trauma surgeons. ERs across the country are welcoming the downgrading of their Trauma levels.

Litigiouness and the knee-jerk resentment by the public (the attitude that somehow a doc comes by his MD through privilege rather than hard work) is going to create a doc shortage for boomers because the boomer docs are longing for retirement and are preparing well for it.

[Polybius]

I expect early retirements as soon as possible. I would also expect more foreign medical graduates, nurse practitioners and physician assistants as the majority of primary care providers in the USA.

The problem is that, for many years, medical schools pushed primary care to the point that it was Politically Incorrect to choose specialty training.

As a result, there is now a glut of primary care M.D.'s, nurse practitioners and physician assistants and a shortage of specialists.

In addition, many primary care physicians opted for clinic practices with one day off during the week and with "Hospitalists" taking care of their patients if they need hospital admission. In short, they made themselves interchangeable with outpatient clinic nurse practitioners and outpatient clinic physician assistants.

So, with the Laws of Supply and Demand being what they are, specialists are now swamped with work but very well paid while primary care physicians are treated as somebody that can easily be replaced by a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant and paid accordingly.

[reg45]

this is about as much as a Hospital community outreach administrator makes in Chicago (guess who?)

I'm not certain. But all of those crooks have the same M. O.

[From many - one.]

Aren’t most non-primary care residencies currently restricted to graduates of American medical schools, thus guaranteeing a pool of FMGs for the less renumative specialties?
.

[neverdem]

Yeah, life’s pretty miserable for a doctor...but they’ll keep trundling their paychecks to the bank.

I don't think you appreciate the aggravation or the 60 - 70 hour work week that many in primary care have to endure.

[krb]

while more than 50 percent consider themselves "second class citizens" compared to surgical and diagnostic specialists.

Every doctor who goes through rotations in med school should have figured that one out early.

[McLynnan]

The most pressing is the lack of trauma surgeons. ERs across the country are welcoming the downgrading of their Trauma levels.

I work for trauma services in a Level 2 center that has been searching for another trauma surgeon for over a year. These people don't grow on trees. Neither do neurosurgeons. We don't want to be downgraded, but a hospital must meet certain staffing requirements to qualify as a trauma center and many centers nationwide are on life support.

[MrLee]

We’ve got a couple dozen doctors in our town and everyone of them are greedy little SOB’s. I don’t exaggerate. Somewhere along the line “care” has been taken out of “healthcare”.

[johniegrad]

No. Also there are many more foreign medical graduates in specialty training than I remember. I’m coming the conclusion that not as many of our best American graduates are going into medicine anymore. The medical school admissions data would not support my position but we certainly hire people here that we wouldn’t have hired 20 years ago. Most of them are in the primary care areas.

[TortReformer]

Exactly...why go to school for 4 years, residency for 4 years and then a fellowship for a year, if I can go to law school for 3 and make more $$$....