Physician Career Information and Resource Center
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LocumTenens.com has put together a comprehensive physician career resource center that provides you with the latest industry news, information and surveys. Whether you are looking for a detailed salary report or current news articles pertaining to your specialty, you will find them here. Our physician career center is divided into separate sections that focus on each of our core specialties.

 

 

Exclusive Physician Articles

Keeping Physicians on Board with Health Care Reform - 8/28/2009

We have approached a crisis point within a national health care system that is inefficient, expensive and unavailable to millions of Americans. With a new administration in Washington, an economy in recession and millions of people losing employer-subsidized health insurance along with their jobs, it appears the time to reform health care has come.

Read the complete whitepaper, "Keeping Physicians on Board with Health Care Reform"

Read the complete whitepaper, "Economic Trends in Healthcare Reform Series"

Physicians Advise US President

LocumTenens.com received more than 1,400 responses to a short online physician survey the firm conducted just before Election Day 2008 regarding priorities for the incoming U.S. president.

Some respondents were philosophical, offering familiar quotations like, "Rome wasn't built in a day," or "Focus your time on what matters and make the country better one issue at a time." Others offered humor, like the doc who said, "If you had any sense you'd quit," or the psychiatrist from Florida who suggested, "Lots of phone therapy with me. First ten hours pro bono."

View the complete article here.

Women Physicians and Income Gaps

While the total number of physicians in the US roughly doubled over the past quarter-century, the total number of female physicians grew by 372%--from 54,284 in 1980 to 256,257 in 2006. Meanwhile, the total number of female physicians in patient care increased even more (by 434.5%), to 213,644 physicians, according to American Medical Association data.

As of 2006, approximately 43% of all residents and fellows were females, compared with 21.5% of total residents in 1980. Also, 48% of U.S. medical students were females in 2006, compared to 26.5% in (1980).

However, despite the growing numbers of women in medicine, female physicians have consistently lagged behind their male counterparts in salary and income levels. To some extent, gender disparities in medical practice earnings can be attributed to gender differences in specialty choice, age or experience level, practice characteristics, and lifestyle choice. "However, evidence also suggests that gender bias and discrimination continues to exist in medicine, resulting in career advancement barriers for women," American Medical Association Chairman Edward L. Langston said in an early-2008 report to the AMA Board of Trustees.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's report, "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005," women who work full-time, year-round earn 77% of what men who worked full-time, year-round earned, on average. The median income for women was $31,858, compared to $41,386 for men.

Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) compensation data by practice specialty show female physicians in the specialties staffed by LocumTenens.com faring better than reported for working women in general, as follows:

Specialty Median Male Income Median Female Income Female Income as % of Male Income
Anesthesiology $368,929 $307,822 83%
General Surgery $318,369 $270,048 85%
Orthopedic Surgery $429,067 $377,343 88%
Psychiatry $199,929 $171,865 86%
Diagnostic Radiology $451,000 $375,000 83%

The AMA projects that women will comprise 30 percent of the physician workforce by the year 2010.

As Dr. Langston concluded in his report, "To accommodate this growing number of women physicians, it is important for the medical profession to improve the work environment for women and address the underlying causes of gender-based disparities in the profession."

Universal Healthcare and Physician Shortages

With health care spending skyrocketing, doctors expressing growing dissatisfaction, and roughly 48 million Americans uninsured, presidential politics is prompting considerable discussion about health care reform. But how do physicians feel about some of the possible “fixes” for U.S. health care? And how are physicians faring financially as another Labor Day approaches?

Among 3,116 responses to a recent survey on physician compensation conducted by LocumTenens.com, only 16 percent of providers thought universal healthcare would affect their incomes positively. While 42 percent of respondents predicted no effect on physician salaries from universal health care, another 42 percent predicted a negative effect.

View the complete article.

The History of Locum Tenens*

Who: Therus Kolff, MD, MPH (founder of Comprehensive Healthcare Systems, Inc., now CompHealth) and Alan Kronhaus, MD (founder of Kron Medical) are often called the pioneers of the locum tenens industry,

View the complete article.

The Advantages of Practicing Rural Medicine

Why practice rural medicine?

Most physicians who have practiced medicine in rural areas agree that the pace of rural health care is slower, and that their relationships with patients are better than they are in urban or suburban practice.

View the complete article.

The 411 on Working Locum Tenens

So you're thinking about taking a locum tenens opportunity, and undoubtedly you've got some questions. Below are some answers to commonly asked questions by locum tenens providers:

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Physicians Report Growing Dissatisfaction with "Business" of Medicine

In a decade when it seems the news media report a physician shortage in another U.S. community or medical specialty weekly, physicians report increasing frustration with practicing medicine in today's healthcare marketplace.

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Addressing the Rural Physician Shortage

The physician shortage is more acute in Rural America where recruiting firms like LocumTenens.com do at least 60% of their business. Consider these statistics from the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) and the federal Office of Rural Health Policy: Roughly 25 percent of the U.S. population lives in Rural America, but only 10 percent of U.S. physicians practice there. There are 2,157 Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSA's) in rural and frontier areas of all states and US territories compared to 910 in urban areas.

State-Sponsored Solutions

Well aware of these types of situations and statistics long before they began getting rather extensive play in the news media, some state-sponsored, healthcare-focused organizations have begun taking action: —To further improve the number of physicians practicing in rural Oregon, Oregon Health & Science University's Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) program is preparing to expand their delivery of rural education programs to include the Oregon Rural Scholars Program. The program will have 3 core elements:

  1. Identify, recruit, admit and provide financial assistance to medical school applicants who demonstrate interest in and aptitude for rural practice.
  2. Provide an enriched rural-centered curriculum.
  3. Provide retention support and professional development for practicing rural physicians.

Outcomes data from similar rural programs in the United States strongly suggest that medical school applicants provided with this type of program are far more likely to enter rural practice and to remain in practice in rural areas.

—In Georgia, the population has increased by 25% during the past decade (to 9 million), and its 65-year-old-plus population is expected to expand by at least 1.1 million through 2030, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. After a recent report issued by the Georgia Board for Physician Workforce indicated that the state ranked 34th out of 46 states in the number of medical school graduates per capita, the oldest and largest of the state's medical schools (Medical College of Georgia and Emory University School of Medicine) increased enrollment for the first time in some 30 years--by about 10% in an effort to follow Association of American Medical Colleges recommendations to increase enrollments over the next decade. The college is in discussions with the University of Georgia to expand the program using an old naval base on its Athens campus.

Federal Fixes

Now more federal legislators are starting to take notice, too: U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has introduced legislation to give $1,000 tax credits to physicians for each month they work in a frontier area or treat a high percentage of patients from such areas. At deadline, Murkowski was scheduled to serve as chairwoman for a February 20 field hearing of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on the proposal. Introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) on February 14, the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2007 proposes to expand the number of Medicare-supported physician residency training positions in resident physician shortage states' teaching hospitals. A state is considered to have a shortage of resident physicians if its ratio of resident physicians per 100,000 people is below the national median level. Nevada currently has 199 physicians in training, and would be eligible for an additional 93 positions under the bill. As a result of this legislation, teaching hospitals in approximately 24 states would be eligible for increases in their resident caps. Concerned about a looming doctor shortage in Florida, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida) recently co-sponsored Reid's bill, said that if the legislation passes, Florida hospitals would gain more than 347 new physician training positions, the most in the nation. "As our population grows and ages, we need to make sure we have enough doctors to meet their needs," he said, noting that physicians often choose to reside in areas where they train.

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