Nearly half of 11,950 U.S. physicians surveyed plan to see fewer patients or stop practicing completely over the next three years, according to results of a national survey commissioned by The Physicians' Foundation.
Results from The Physicians' Perspective: Medical Practice in 2008 survey also indicate that 60% of the responding primary-care physicians (PCPs) and specialists would not recommend medicine as a career to young people—even though 78% of them believe that there is a shortage of PCPs today.
“The thing we heard over and over again from the physicians was that they're unhappy they can't spend more time with their patients, which is why they went into primary care in the first place,” noted Sandra Johnson in a statement announcing the findings. Johnson, a board member of The Physicians' Foundation, observed that like patients, PCPs are frustrated dealing with HMOs and government red tape.
Most physicians reported that an increase in paperwork over the past three years has caused them to spend less time per patient, and feared that proposed cuts to Medicare reimbursement would render their practices unsustainable.
More information on the survey is available here.