May 30, 2023
A year that began with the COVID-19 Omicron surge ended with many of the same old issues regaining the attention of physicians, according to those who responded to "Decreasing Medicare reimbursement and poor payor mix destroy our income," one physician wrote, and another said that"patients have become rude and come with poor information from social media." One respondent described the situation this way:"Overwhelming burnout.
Overall physician compensation for 2022 was $352,000, an increase of almost 18% since 2018."Supply and demand is the biggest driver," Mike Belkin, JD, of physician recruitment firm Merritt Hawkins, said in an interview."Organizations understand it's not getting any easier to get good candidates, and so for the most part, physicians are getting good offers."
When asked if they would choose medicine again, 72% of internist respondents and 73% of all physicians said yes, with emergency medicine and dermatology representing the two extremes. A question about specialty choice showed internists to be the least likely of the 29 included specialties to follow the same path, with 61% approving their initial selection, versus 97% for plastic surgeons, Medscape reported.