A third of the physician surveyed by Jackson Healthcare plan to retire or leave medicine within the next decade. Why?
The healthcare staffing company's polls tend toward the downbeat: In previous surveys, doctors told them that they didn't like the Affordable Care Act ("70% disbelieve that the law will contain costs; 67% don't expect it to improve the doctor-patient relationship").
Jackson's current report is drawn from a series of recent surveys, and sustains the grim tone of their previous findings.
The doctors still don't like the ACA, for a variety of reasons -- 55% of physicians wish it were repealed, but 31% want to go all the way to single payer. (The surveys were taken before the Supreme Court decision.)
More interesting: 34% of them plan to be out of the business by 2022.
Why? The data is unclear, though Jackson Healthcare's report is explicit about the 16% of doctors who are considering leaving the profession next year, or going part-time or freelance: More than 55% cite "economic factors such as medical malpractice insurance, overhead, electronic medical records, etc.," and nearly 50% say they "don’t want to practice in the era of healthcare reform."
Then again, nearly as many of the ones considering a 2013 exit say they're just burned out. About a fifth of the whole group are retiring because they're of age or taking early retirement, but 55% percent are under the age of 55
56% of the doctors in Jackson's survey are in private practice, 20% work for a hospital or health system, 15% work for a single or multi-specialty practice owned by a health system, and 9% freelance.
Most of the non-private-practice doctors had been private practitioners before, and most of them switched within the last five years -- which conforms with the trend away from private practice that was noted in Merritt Hawkins' recent study.
Most of the respondents currently treat Medicare and Medicaid patients, but though 82% want new patients, only 75% say they'll take new Medicare patients, and 64% say they'll take new Medicaid patients.
"A majority of physicians across many specialties said they could no longer afford to accept new Medicaid patients due to declining reimbursements," reports Jackson Healthcare.