GOVERNMENT & MEDICINE

Practice trends influencing charity care

Quick View. May 5, 2008.

Income pressures on doctors over the last decade have caused a shift away from solo practice and practice ownership.

	1996-97	2000-01	2004-05
Income from practice of medicine	$180,930	$170,850	$168,122
Physicians owning practice	68.9%	58.3%	57.6%
Physicians in solo or two-physician practices	40.7%	36.1%	34.0%
Physicians in small group practices	19.3%	21.0%	19.4%
Physicians in medium or large group practices	9.5%	9.3%	12.5%
Physicians in institutional practices	19.3%	22.2%	22.3%
Physicians providing any charity care	76.3%	71.5%	68.2%
Physicians accepting all new Medicaid patients	51.1%	51.9%	52.1%
Physicians accepting no new Medicaid patients	19.4%	20.9%	21.0%

The financial and practice trends have, in turn, impacted charity care and acceptance of Medicaid patients, concludes a recent report, based on the Center for Studying Health System Change's Community Tracking Study Physician Surveys.

Source: "Effects of Changes in Incomes and Practice Circumstances on Physicians' Decisions to Treat Charity and Medicaid Patients," Milbank Quarterly, March

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