Practicing Medicine

There are many different settings in which physicians practice medicine. The following is a brief discussion of a few types. Note that this is by no means an all-inclusive or comprehensive discussion, but rather an attempt to give an overview.

Group Practice

Most physicians today join existing group practices rather than starting their own. There are several benefits to joining an existing practice. These include lower or no start-up costs and shared call schedules, among others.

Several physicians sharing call (say 5 physicians, each taking every 5th week of call for all of the patients seen in the practice) can be a huge plus in a group setting. Often, in solo practice, a physician is responsible for all of his or her own patients all of the time, taking call essentially every night, unless other arrangements are made with other physicians of the same specialty.

Financially, when finishing residency, most residents are not exactly wealthy, but instead may owe from $100,000 to $250,000 or so in student loans. Additional practice start-up costs and the potential of having to build up a practice for several years may not be very appealing - or even impossible for some new physicians just out of residency.

Most often, already established practices are looking for physicians to recruit and pay a yearly salary or some other financial package based on performance. In other group practice settings, physicians get together to jointly finance a building and share office staff and other expenses, but each physician bills patients separately and remains more independent - not as employee.

Of course, many physicians are employed by HMOs and other large healthcare companies or hospitals, drawing a fixed paycheck or performance based pay.

Other financial concerns are the costs to maintain an office, collections, malpractice costs, etc. that may make employment much more appealing than maintaining a solo practice.