Physicians spoke with Becker's in March about the pros and cons of getting into private practice. Here is what we heard:
"I finally removed myself from private equity and corporatized medicine and changed jobs. I stopped working at giant hospital systems and moved to a smaller, physician-owned hospital and have a much more manageable schedule and am simply just paid fairly for my time … and no longer have to put up with being forced to take on more uncompensated or under-compensated work just because the hospital or staffing company has understaffed everything and expect physicians to pick up the slack for their own business mistakes for free." — Anesthesiologist Andrew Gerstner, MD, on his decision to move into private practice.
"Declining reimbursements for private practitioners encourages formation of groups and consolidation to help providers sustain their practice models, but I fear consolidation leads to less competition: Certain sectors of healthcare don't face the challenge of healthy competition. This leaves patients with fewer options for care. With that being said, this poses a great opportunity for new private practice groups to take advantage of being nimble and thriving in the changing healthcare climate." — Interventional pain physician Taif Mukhdomi, MD, on healthcare trends to be wary of.
"Private practice offers young spine surgeons the opportunity for ownership in ASCs, private hospitals, imaging centers, physical therapy clinics and more. This can be particularly attractive to business-oriented spine surgeons who value ownership and autonomy. Private practice also offers more freedom and flexibility compared to being employed by a particular institution, which may have more rules and regulations." — Neurosurgeon Jason Huang, MD, on the pros of operating a private practice.
"Private practice physicians are being driven into extinction because big healthcare entities and corporations are buying up and employing many private physicians. This is resulting in much higher healthcare costs at the expense of driving down quality of patient care. Since these big hospitals and healthcare corporations have much better contracts than the private practice, insurance companies are then reducing payments to private practice physicians, increasing patients' premiums and deductibles and allowing less coverage, which overall results in much lower quality of care and higher out-of-pocket costs to patients." — Spine surgeon Hooman Melamed, MD, on threats to private practice this year.
"The autonomy to shape their practice should be the No. 1 driver of any physician wanting to go into private practice. Private equity offers a big upfront payment when you sell your practice, and an employed model offers a guaranteed salary, but they are both subject to bureaucracies that can make a physician's life miserable. In private practice, you can shape your practice the way you want." — Gastroenterologist Naveen Reddy, MD, on what is driving young physicians to private practice.