Today, I came across this article that caught my eye. I think the reason it caught my eye is the heading "Primary doctors earn $2.7M less than specialists during career." I always knew primary care doctors earned less than specialists but this heading made me want to read more. In this article by James Gallagher from the Triangle Business Journal he quotes from a study produced by Duke University. With the recent healthcare reform package passed the need for primary care physicians increases in order to achieve the objectives of improved coordination of care and ultimately cost savings. However, with less than 5% of the graduating medical students going into primary care we are in for a very challenging situation for a couple of reasons.
- 1. First, as the article points out, physicians take on a large amount of debt to complete medical school and establish a medical practice. With a large amount of debt staring them in the eyes it is no wonder they do not go into primary care.
- 2. Second, even if we fixed the reimbursement amount for primary care to make an advantage to go into this type of practice we will have "turn-around" time for more students to seek primary care as a career path.
Most are entering medical schools today with the full intent of going to specialized care so we already have between 4 to 8 years before this trend could possible move to more students seeking primary care as a career path. However, why would a student want to enter primary care today? We still do not know the impact of healthcare reform. We are still unsure of the payment security of Medicare for physicians. Even if primary care doctors get an increase in payments from Medicare, continued Medicare cuts will not make anyone feel confident to pursue primary care. We have a problem and this article highlights a underlying issue that must be dealt with to truly deal with effective healthcare reform for the future.
Read more about the Duke Study.