One year after President Obama signed his landmark health reform bill, physicians report difficulties and unhappiness over the state of their medical practices.

For example, physicians revealed severe cash flow problems in one Texas-based survey, citing financial pressures related to health reform as one of their top challenges.

In particular, 59 percent of the 3,580 member and nonmember physicians surveyed said they had a very unfavorable opinion of the Affordable Care Act, and 18 percent said it was the biggest challenge their practice was facing, according to a biennial survey of the Texas state medical association.  

Alarmingly, 51 percent of physicians whose practices reported cash flow problems drew from their personal accounts to keep them going in 2010, according to the Texas Medical Association report. About a third of these physicians did the same in 2008. In addition, 33 percent of surveyed physicians took out commercial bank loans last year to stay in business, up from 22 percent in 2008.

In addition, 33 percent of practices with cash flow problems laid off employees and 23 percent terminated or renegotiated plan contracts in 2010. Twenty percent reduced or terminated services to government payers, and 5 percent closed or sold their practices.

The news isn't much better from a new national survey of 3729 family care physicians conducted by medical market research firm M3 Global Research, which revealed that 40 percent of its respondents considered leaving their primary care practices this year.

In addition, just 15.6 percent indicated hope that 2011 will be a bette-than-average year for their personal income, with 17.7 percent forecasting 2011 to be one of the worst earning years of their career, M3 COO Craig Overpeck noted in a statement. The survey also reported only three out of five physicians enjoying better job satisfaction than they anticipated on their first day in medical school.

To learn more:
- read this article from American Medical News
- see this statement from M3 Global Research

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