Despite the noise coming from many industry pundits, the majority of independent physician practices want to stay that way.
According to a joint physician study by CareCloud and QuantiaMD, 60% of the 2,094 respondents who own their practice are not looking to sell. Only 11% are actively looking for buyers, soon joining the 10% who have already been acquired due to financial challenges.
It’s no surprise that the current climate for independent practices is lukewarm at best. Declining reimbursements, mounting government interference and rising administrative costs all weigh heavily on private practice physicians.
So why is it that solo and independent practices are still less likely to sell than their larger-practice counterparts? 65% of solo practitioners claim they are not looking to abandon the private practice model, while only 6% are actively looking to sell.
In fact, the desire to sell a practice grows as the number of providers at a practice approaches 50. In fact, 64% of practices with 2-9 providers, 46% of 10-25 providers, and 42% of 26-49 providers do not wish to sell.
Turns out there are several advantages for the resolute physicians would rather remain independent.
For starters, joining a hospital or health system means forming a part of a much larger organization. Thus, your decision-making power dissolves as you fall under a hierarchal structure.
This is a problem for private practice physicians who have far more control over details such as income. Rather than being locked into a salary agreement, your earnings are directly correlated to your practice’s profitability.
Also, doctors in independent practices enjoy the autonomy of running their own business. Setting work hours, deciding how much time to spend with each patient, hiring your own staff, and even choosing how to dress are just some of the freedoms that come with owning a medical practice.
Then there are the patients. A transition to larger health care organizations could potentially mean better, more coordinated care, sure, but the decline of private practices would put an end to the strong, long-term relationships between patients and doctors that have long characterized medicine in the U.S.
To further drive the point home, a patient who sees a doctor at a private practice is more likely than a patient who is part of a health system to continue seeing the same doctor each office visit.
Independent practices are still valuable in today’s changing healthcare system, even if they won’t quite look the same to you in a few years. Ultimately, these organizations are an integral part of healthcare – they provide much-needed health services for underserved communities and foster stronger patient-physician relationships.
Unless you’re looking to be managed by bureaucratic administrators, stay the course. The truth is, if physicians have anything to say about it, the private practice is here to stay.
