What Makes a High-Earning Family Physician?

[scharnhorst]

What Makes a High-Earning Family Physician?

Family physician income will always be a high-interest subject, at least among family physicians. Surveys from the AAFP and other groups show how the average family physician's income has changed over time (see “Average income”), but they don't tell the whole story.

www.aafp.org

WHAT MAKES A HIGH-EARNER?​

A 2004 survey of active AAFP members who were out of residency five years or longer and worked 40 hours per week or more indicated that the following factors, listed in order of importance, are associated with high-earning family physicians (e.g., those earning $160,000 or more, compared to those earning $100,000 or less).

• Providing more patient visits (high-earners saw a mean number of 122 patients per week; low-earners saw 84);
• Practicing the full scope of family medicine in the hospital setting;
• Being in larger practices (which may be related to the next four factors);
• Providing clinical lab, physical therapy, occupational therapy and imaging services in-house;
• Viewing negotiations with payers and evaluating contracts as very important;
• Participating in quality improvement, marketing, strategic planning and benchmarking;
• Having in-house billing and collections;
• Seeing more Medicare patients (nationally, may vary by state);
• Working more hours;
• Being paid based on productivity;
• Planning to purchase an EHR.

LOW-IMPACT FACTORS ON INCOME​

A 2004 survey of active AAFP members found that the following factors did not make a significant difference in family physician income:

• Current use of an EHR;
• Number of staff meetings;
• Practice management courses for physicians or staff;
• Educational level of in-house billing staff;
• Fee-for-service versus capitated revenue;
• Percentage of co-payments collected at the time of service;
• Aging of accounts receivable.

What you can do now​

There are a number of things you can you do if you want to make more money:

1. See more patients. The difference between high-earners and low-earners averaged eight patients per day.
2. Work for changing the health care system to ensure that primary care, prevention and high quality are explicitly recognized and financially rewarded.
3. Read the report of the Future of Family Medicine Task Force Six, published online at Report on Financing the New Model of Family Medicine. The report offers an economic model that, even under the current reimbursement system, is projected to increase family physician income.
4. Include hospital care in your scope of practice.
5. Consider expanding your practice's size to take advantage of economies of scale and other factors (e.g., in-house billing and collections).
6. Evaluate contracts carefully before signing. Do not sign a bad contract.
7. Look for ways to increase the number of patients you see who are insured by the best-paying health plans.

This is a very old article and here is the summary I posted
Do you guys think this is still accurate or would you change anything ?


Thanks

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[deleted87716]

Still accurate.