If you look at the statistics, it’s clear that the trend over the past several years has been that doctors are moving more from owning and operating their own medical practices to being employees of hospitals or hospital-owned organizations.
Younger physicians, especially those just coming out of residency, are looking for the “stability” of a job as an employed physician with a hospital, rather than joining an independent physician-owned medical practice or (Heaven forbid!) starting their own medical practice.
Is entrepreneurship in the practice of medicine dead? It’s certainly not dead in the practice of dentistry and other healthcare practices–you see independent advance practice nurses starting their own practices, for example.
Although it looks like the trend of hospitals gobbbling up physician practices may be slowing and that the percentage of doctors being employees versus the percentage of doctors being their own practice owners may be shifting back slightly towards that of independent physicians, it is without question that the great bargaining power of hospitals with payors has changed the landscape for entrepreneurial doctors. That, and the undeniable administrative burden of running an independent medical practice.
But, has the movement towards the commoditization of medical practice and physicians led to greater fulfillment by the doctors who have signed on to be employees of the powerful hospitals of the world? The answer seems to be a resounding “NO!”
Physician burnout is rampant. What was once viewed almost universally as an honored and even revered profession has become a grind of a business for doctors who find themselves cogs in a vast hospital-controlled healthcare industry.
But, it doesn’t have to be that way.
The healthcare industry is nothing without doctors. Hospitals are nothing without doctors. Doctors are the lifeblood of the healthcare industry. And doctors need to recognize their importance and their power.
If only more physicians took the bold and entrepreneurial step to say “no” to the control of the healthcare industry by hospitals (and insurance companies) and decided to start and run their own medical practices, over time, the tide would turn and more and more power would return to the physicians of our country.
One hopeful development in healthcare today is the increasing number of physicians choosing to provide their services through a direct-pay model, bypassing the insurance industry and taking control over their time and their finances.
Doctors have to make a lot of choices in their professional lives. One choice that more and more doctors may choose to make in the coming years is that of becoming an independent business owner of their own practice, perhaps through a direct pay model.
If things don’t change fairly soon, fewer bright and enterprising young people will be drawn to the study off medicine and more of the best and brightest may forego medical school in place of business school, or even law school. And the world definitely needs more doctors, not more lawyers.