CRANBURY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Medical Economics®, a multimedia platform that provides resources for physicians that include practice management, health technology and expert voices, releases its 90th annual Physician Report, which discusses the results of its annual salary survey.
The results show that for just over half of physicians (52%), compensation was about the same as last year. Income dropped for more than one-fourth (26%) of physicians responding to the survey. About 22% of respondents reported a boost in compensation.
For 2018, salaries were either flat or declined for most physicians. The pressure to maintain current compensation levels is becoming more difficult due to time pressure to see more patients and lower reimbursement rates, physicians report.
“We had 1,300 physicians participating in this nationwide survey,” said Daniel Verdon, vice president of content and strategy for MultiMedia Healthcare, LLC. “This survey, with a 90-year history, provides accurate benchmarks on compensation for primary care and many other subspecialties. It also delivers insightful feedback from physicians on important topics like malpractice insurance, work-life balance, and other areas.”
More than 70% of physicians pointed to uncompensated tasks, such as prior authorizations, as primary reasons for lost productivity and revenue. Other reasons include:
- Higher overhead.
- Lower reimbursement.
- Greater technology costs.
- Government regulations.
- Difficulty collecting from.
- Penalties from quality metrics.
Some of the top reasons for improved finances:
- Seeing more patients.
- Change in practice model.
- Receiving pay-for-performance.
- Renegotiated payer contracts.
- Addition of ancillary services.
Salary results are presented for physicians in private practice, hospital-owned practice, in-patient hospitals, nonprofits and government. Specialties and subspecialties in this report include internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, cardiology, obstetrics/gynecology, dermatology and urology.
Data was collected during November 2018. The margin of error is 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For the survey results, go to http://www.medicaleconomics.com/physician-report.
About Medical Economics®
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Economics® is a digital and print multimedia platform
that provides physicians with expert advice, shared experiences, tools
and resources to succeed in today’s practice environment. As the
highest-ranked practice management publication in the market, Medical
Economics® covers topics including primary care, the
business of medicine, health information technology and more. Medical
Economics® is part of MultiMedia Healthcare, LLC.