More than half of family physicians think that physicians in general are underpaid, but 50% said that in their own situations, they felt fairly paid given their work demands, based on data from Medscape’s annual Family Physician Compensation Report.
The report, based on data from 7,000 physicians across the United States, showed similarly that 50% of family physicians were happy with their pay, which put them about midway on a list of 29 specialties ranking happiness with pay, above some of the higher paid specialties including orthopedics and plastic surgery.
The report cited data from the Mercer consulting firm showing an increase of 3% in 2023 over 2022 earnings among physicians in the United States overall. The average annual earnings for family medicine physicians were near the bottom of a list of 29 specialties included in the report, but 90% said that potential pay was not a factor or a minor factor in choosing the specialty.
According to the report, 61% of family physicians reported taking no additional work to boost income, but 20% reported taking on additional medical-related work, and 6% reported non-medical-related work.
For most family physicians compensation for patient care remained approximately the same as previous years, and a majority said that neither competing physician practices nor other medical businesses (such as retail clinics or nonphysician practitioners) had an effect on their incomes (70% and 62%, respectively).
Although 54% of family practice physicians reported opportunities for incentive bonuses, these bonuses are generally based on a combination of clinical, economic, and experience factors, and are lower for primary care physicians than for specialists. The average bonus for a primary care physician in 2023 was $27,000 compared with an average bonus of $51,000 for a specialist, according to the report.
Overall, 32% of the family physicians reported gratitude from and relationships with patients as the most satisfying part of their jobs, followed by being good at their jobs by finding answers to medical questions and making diagnoses (24%), and making the world a better place (19%).
Why Money Still Matters
The relatively minor increase in earnings is “the minimum necessary to continue to attract talented individuals into family medicine,” Susan Kuchera, MD, associate director of the Family Medicine Residency Program at Jefferson Health, Abington, Pennsylvania, said in an interview.
The current report referenced a 2023 report of interviews with medical residents, and approximately half of residents overall said that potential earnings were influential in their decisions.
However, the current Medscape report does not reflect the debt burden held by most new physicians, said Dr. Kuchera, who was not involved in the report. “The educational debt and long years of training can be a deterrent for some to choose a lower paying specialty like primary care; if we want to continue to provide our communities with primary care specialists, we need to keep pace with other areas of medicine,” she said.
“It takes a minimum of 7 years to train a primary care physician, we can’t lose sight over time of the factors that impact a person’s choice to pursue primary care,” Dr. Kuchera said.