The number of private practices has rapidly declined in the last 10 years, as physicians move to the stability of employed models amid increasing healthcare consolidation.
"The loss of physician-owned private practice … makes physicians vulnerable to the whims of large corporations," Loay Kabbani, MD, vascular surgery specialist at Detroit-based Henry Ford Health, told Becker's. "As physicians become more and more employed, we lose control of our practice and our patient-physician relationships. The new generation is more about timing in and out."
Here are five key statistics on the decline of private practice physicians:
26%. The percentage of physicians employed by private practice in 2022, according to a 2022 report from Avalere.
108,700. The number of physicians that left private practice between January 2019 and 2021, according to the Avalere report.
36,200. The number of physician practices that were acquired between 2019 and 2021, according to Avalere.
13 percentage points. The decline of physicians in private practice between 2012 and 2022, according to a report from the American Medical Association.
80%. The percentage of physician practice owners who said the ability to negotiate higher reimbursement rates with payers influenced their decision to sell their practice, according to the AMA report.