Because the survey is confusing, misleading, and rather pointless.
First, they sent surveys to 3000 CFO's, and got 100 responses. That's a 3% response rate. Hard to generalize anything based upon that.
Second, they asked CFO's to basically guess how much various specialties "brought into" the hospital. What exactly does that mean? According to the explanation, any test ordered counts, but not referrals. So what does that mean? If I order a CT scan it may be billed as $1000. But what about the cost of the CT scanner? The radiologist who reads the scan? The techs? etc?
Third, who exactly are they asking? Are these FP's who do just inpatient work? Many PCP's are not hired by hospitals.
Fourth, and finally, do these numbers make any sense? How much does a knee replacement cost? Hard to answer, but the range seems to be $60 - $120K. That's money "brought in" to the hospital. Let's assume though that they mean profit. How much of that knee replacement is profit? Let's assume a 10% profit margin (a number I simply made up). That's $6-10K per replacement. Let's say a surgeon has 2 OR days a week, replacing 3 joints a day (again, I'm making this up). That's 6 joints / week x 40 weeks x $6000/joint = $1.4 million -- and that's all profit.
Now let's look at an outpatient FP doc. Let's say they work 46 weeks, 4 days a week, 20 patients a day, $150 per patient seen = $552K, and that's gross. Subtract out expenses.
Bottom line, something about these numbers makes no sense.
