Do you want to know what a physician is worth in the employed model? Well, read this article in Medscape. It’s called Physician Pay Up, But Patient Demand, Labor Market Causing Struggles: Report and it breaks you down into numbers. Here are some highlights:

• With the increased number of patients seeking care came increases in physician productivity, compensation, and revenues compared with the last quarter of 2021, according to a recent report.
• The median investment or subsidy per full-time employed physician and advanced practice practitioner increased 14.4% from the fourth quarter of 2021 to $288,227 in the first quarter of 2022.
• Bates defines the median investment or subsidy as the net patient service revenue minus total direct expense; investments or subsidies are divided by physician full-time equivalents. Direct expenses can include physician and staff salaries, facility costs, net supplies costs, and drug costs, he said.
• While the median investment or subsidy per clinician increased 1.5% in comparison with the pandemic’s start in March 2020, this metric rose 8.9% from the first quarter of 2021, per the report.
• Physicians’ increased productivity also resulted in higher compensation, according to the report. Physician compensation increased 3.6% quarter-over-quarter to $349,072 in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 6.6% when compared with the same quarter in the 2 previous years.
• Expenses related to physicians and advanced practice providers shot up to a 2-year high of $946,602 for the first quarter of 2022; that’s a 7.1% increase from the last 3 months of 2021 and a 10.5% increase from the first quarter of 2021.
• The increase in patient volume is driving patient access issues, said Bates. Patients want to see a physician and the practice often can’t fit them in for 6 weeks. While referring a patient to urgent care or the emergency department may be appropriate for primary care practices, it’s not a good option for other specialties, such as orthopedics, he explained.
• Practices can extend hours, but that can be challenging given the labor shortage, said Bates. Large health systems have more flexibility and can provide patients with access to a same-day or next-day visit with a physician assistant or a nurse practitioner, but that can be difficult for smaller practices, he added.

Does this all make sense to you? Yeah, me neither. I think if you simplify it then it goes like this:

• Employed docs are subsidized.
• It costs a lot to pay them and their staff and that expense is going higher.
• To pay for this, doctors will need to work longer hours or have more midlevels under them.
• You are just a number.

OR

You can choose to do direct primary care and be your own boss.

I recommend that.