Survey Finds More Doctors Plan to Retire Early. Is Concierge Medicine a Solution?
As the healthcare industry continues to shift and change in response to trends in Medicare and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, more and more doctors are finding the exit. According to a new survey by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, 62% of physicians believe that many of their peers will retire early within the next few years, with 55% saying that others will scale back their hours as a result of current trends.
70% of doctors said that they are content to practice medicine; a take-away from that statistic is that 7 out of 10 doctors do not find issue with practicing medicine as a concept, but rather find issue with the healthcare industry that encompasses it. And considering that almost 50% of all physicians believe that their income will decrease in 2014 as a result of the Affordable Care Act, the American healthcare system needs to incentivize doctors to stay in their practices.
In light of this dismal news, we here at SignatureMD propose concierge medicine as an method for physicians to weather the impending healthcare storm. By allowing physicians to practice medicine the way that they want to without having to take a severe pay cut or by further increasing their over-crowded practices, doctors will have a greater incentive to continue to practice medicine. And with 30 million new patients coming into the system in 2014 through Medicaid expansions and healthcare exchanges, we need all the doctors we can find.
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Source(s)
I. More Docs Plan to Retire Early – MedPage Today (03/2013)
About SignatureMD
SignatureMD is one of the nation’s largest firms providing initial conversion and ongoing support services to concierge medicine physicians. SignatureMD currently partners with over 200 affiliated primary care physicians and specialists across 35 states, and its network is rapidly expanding.