Lower primary care physician pay not tied to work hours

Although primary care physicians (PCP) typically earn less compared to specialists, a new study confirms that the disparity cannot be explained away as a difference in how hard these doctors work.

For the study, published last month in the Archives of Internal Medicine, J. Paul Leigh and colleagues analyzed 2004-2005 data on 6,381 physicians in 41 specialties from the Community Tracking Survey. The researchers found that the average doctor works 2,524 hours annually, or 48.5 hours per week. To researchers' surprise, pediatricians, family practitioners, and internal medicine specialists worked hours in the middle range, yet previous research confirmed they earned compensations at the bottom of the scale.

Nonetheless, some specialists, such as dermatologists, who put in fewer hours, still earned high wages. In general, however, the highest-paid specialists, such as vascular surgeons, also worked the longest hours.

With few exceptions, physicians who work the least hours, such as pediatricians, dermatologists, and child and adolescent psychiatrists, tend to have the highest rates of job satisfaction, American Medical News reports. However, some physicians who reported high work hours, such as neonatologists and perinatologists, also reported strong career satisfaction.

PCPs' average work hours and low pay do not bode well for their satisfaction or for addressing the growing shortage of physicians willing to work in primary care, according to Leigh.

"If your work hours are the same and your earnings are very much lower than the other specialists then you're going to have a lot of medical students choosing the specialties," he told Healthcare Finance News. "Primary care physicians feel like they've been given the shaft [on reimbursement] for a long time," he added. Leigh went on to urge policy makers to fix physician payment disparities, perhaps incrementally, and to give PCPs a greater voice in determining reimbursement.

To learn more:
- read the article from Healthcare Finance News
- read the article in American Medical News
- see the study abstract from the Archives of Internal Medicine

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