More Doctors Giving Up Private Practices

Traditionally, American medicine has been largely a cottage industry. Most doctors cared for patients in small, privately owned clinics - sometimes in rooms adjoining their homes. However an increasing share of young physicians, burdened by medical school debts and seeking regular hours, are deciding against opening private practices. Instead, they are accepting salaries at hospitals and health systems. And a growing number of older doctors - facing rising costs and fearing they will not be able to recruit junior partners - are selling their practices and moving into salaried jobs.

As recently as 2005, more than two-thirds of medical practices were physician-owned - a share that had been relatively constant for many years, the Medical Group Management Association says. But within three years, that share dropped below 50%, and analysts say the slide has continued. The process feeds on itself because doctors who remain in private practice worry that as their peers sell out, their own options become more limited and the prices for their own practices fall.

The trend away from small private practices is driven by growing concerns over medical errors and changes in government payments to doctors. But an even bigger push may be coming from electronic health records. The computerized systems are expensive and time-consuming for doctors, and their substantial benefits to patient safety, quality of care and system efficiency accrue almost entirely to large organizations, not small ones.

Read the full article in The New York Times, or click here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/health/policy/26docs.html?ref=health