Private Practice Anesthesia

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I've heard about private practice anesthesiology but am still unsure of what that actually means. Aren't all anesthesiologists (or their groups) employed by the hospital? Is the group what is considered to be the "private practice"?

Originally Posted by DrBB

I've heard about private practice anesthesiology but am still unsure of what that actually means. Aren't all anesthesiologists (or their groups) employed by the hospital? Is the group what is considered to be the "private practice"?

Relatively few are employed by the hospital.
Private practice basically means not academic. It's not really that simple though because there's a lot of variety in and out of academic practices. Some academic sites are run pretty much as private practices. VA is kind of like hospital employed but can also be academic.
Most private practice jobs are in a group that contracts with the hospital, not directly employed by the hospital. The group has an exclusive contract with the hospital to cover so many sites at such and such hours. The exclusive contract prevents outside docs especially younger docs from competing with the older guys or amc/business people. For the hospital it guarantees coverage of their ORs which might be more difficult to do in an open practice setting.

There are two types of medical practice. Academic and private. The latter says nothing about the structure of the practice (employed, contracted, etc) it just means that you are not in an academic setting. Generally speaking the primary goal of the private practitioner is income as opposed to the academic who's primary goal can be education, research etc. There can be overlap of course, but that is the general distinction.

- pod