3 notes on primary care in 2019

Primary care physicians continue to be in high demand, according to recruitment data from search firm Merritt Hawkins.

A recent repor from Merritt Hawkins, based on a sample of more than 3,000 physician and advanced practitioner search assignments, shows family medicine physicians are still the most requested physician specialty, for the 13th year running.

A few other trends of note:

  1. Large health systems, particularly those that have recently consolidated, are proactively recruiting primary care physicians in groups of 200 or more to create networks to serve larger patient populations.
  2. While demand for family medicine physicians is high, it is declining. Merritt Hawkins credits this in part to routine swings in physician recruitment, but also to another factor: patients. Data indicates primary care visits are declining, while visits to nurse practitioners and physician assistants are skyrocketing, potentially due to the limited access to family medicine physicians.
  3. Internal medicine is also a difficult specialty to recruit, as many physicians subspecialize or go into hospital medicine. The responsibilities of the office-based internal medicine physician are being taken on by pulmonologists, geriatricians and others.

Read more here.

 

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