Nearly half of all practicing physicians, 49%, said that by 2011 they will have limited their practices or quit entirely, according to survey results released today.
And 45% said if they had the financial means, they would retire today.
Yet 78% of the 11,950 physicians who responded to the survey from The Physicians' Foundation said there is a shortage of primary care physicians in the United States.
The survey, mailed to 270,000 primary care doctors and 50,000 specialists, had a response rate of 3.7%.
Importantly, it was mailed from May through July 2008 -- before the market meltdown and ongoing worldwide financial crisis.
Among other findings of the survey:
- 11% of responders said they plan to retire sometime in the next three years - 13% said they plan to stop clinical practice but want to continue to work in healthcare in a non-clinical capacity - 82% said proposed cuts in Medicare reimbursement would make their practices unsustainable - 66% said Medicaid doesn't pay enough to cover the cost of providing care and 36% said the same of Medicare - 33% said they no longer accept Medicaid patients and 12% said they would not accept Medicare patients - only 17% said their practices were financially healthy and profitable
And this at a time when our senior population is about to put stresses on our health care system that we've never seen before.
Peggy Peck, Executive Editor at MedPage Today wrote an article titled Survey Reveals Large Numbers of Practicing Physicians Ready to Call it Quits.
She writes:
Nearly half of all practicing physicians, 49%, said that by 2011 they will have limited their practices or quit entirely, according to survey results released today.
And 45% said if they had the financial means, they would retire today.
Yet 78% of the 11,950 physicians who responded to the survey from The Physicians' Foundation said there is a shortage of primary care physicians in the United States.
The survey, mailed to 270,000 primary care doctors and 50,000 specialists, had a response rate of 3.7%.
Importantly, it was mailed from May through July 2008 -- before the market meltdown and ongoing worldwide financial crisis.
Among other findings of the survey:
- 11% of responders said they plan to retire sometime in the next three years
- 13% said they plan to stop clinical practice but want to continue to work in healthcare in a non-clinical capacity
- 82% said proposed cuts in Medicare reimbursement would make their practices unsustainable
- 66% said Medicaid doesn't pay enough to cover the cost of providing care and 36% said the same of Medicare
- 33% said they no longer accept Medicaid patients and 12% said they would not accept Medicare patients
- only 17% said their practices were financially healthy and profitable
And this at a time when our senior population is about to put stresses on our health care system that we've never seen before.
Read her entire article. It's very informative.