As many private practice doctors shutter their offices to join health systems and group practices, subspecialty pediatricians are more often entering private practice. The trend is examined in a new study published this week in the journal Pediatrics.
[See also: Physicians fleeing private practice.]
The University of Michigan study examined the clinical practice settings of a random national sample of 1,067 pediatric subspecialists in five subspecialties: pediatric cardiology, pediatric critical care, pediatric gastroenterology, pediatric hematology/oncology and neonatology.
Given that historically, pediatric subspecialists work in academic centers, it was not surprising that the majority of respondents, 65 percent, reported working in an academic hospital or outpatient clinic. What was surprising was that procedurally-based pediatric subspecialists, such as cardiologists and gastroenterologists, had the highest proportion of specialists in private outpatient practice at 27 percent and 24 percent, respectively.
“Pediatric subspecialists are likely going into private practice because of the potential for greater compensation and the increase in the patient population seeking subspecialty care due to the increase in survival of children with chronic diseases,” said Gary Freed, MD, one of the authors of the study and the director of the division of general pediatrics and the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Michigan.
The study said that increases in the number of pediatric subspecialists “combined with (a) greater concentration of children in urban and suburban settings, may result in a greater number of opportunities for pediatric subspecialists to enter private practice.”
The study’s authors noted that even though they examined only five pediatric subspecialties, the study’s results indicating the trend of pediatric subspecialists into private practice means that because a larger number of such doctors are available to provide clinical care to children, a smaller number are working in academic centers, conducting research, teaching or advancing specialty care.
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