Hospital Statistics Chart Rise in Physician Employment

By Haydn Bush

The number of physicians employed by hospitals has grown by 32 percent since 2000, according to the recently released 2012 edition of AHA Hospital Statistics. Today, hospitals employ approximately 212,000 physicians, according to the book. Hospitals have a range of relationships with privileged physicians: 55.1 percent of physicians are not employed or under contract, while 20.3 percent are covered by a group contract; 17.3 percent are directly employed and 7.2 percent have individual contracts.

Among the other key findings:

  • From 2003 to 2010, the proportion of hospitals with hospitalists on staff grew from 29.6 percent to 59.8 percent. From 2007-10, the proportion of hospitals employing intensivists grew from 20.7 percent to 29.7 percent.
  • The percent of hospitals reporting a portion of their revenue is from capitated or shared risk continues to fall. In 2003, 12.6 percent of hospitals reported capitated payments and 10.2 percent reported shared risk arrangements. Those numbers fell in 2010 to 7.6 percent reporting capitated payments and 6.4 percent with shared risk. However, the book predicted that provisions of the Affordable Care Act will likely lead to the reversal of this trend.
  • The report also explored the expected growth of advanced practice registered nurses to cope with predicted shortages of primary care physicians. Roughly 32.6 percent of all APRNs employed by hospitals work in primary care; 26.3 percent work in another specialty, 22.8 percent are employed in anesthesia services, 21 percent work in EDs, 9.3 percent are employed in patient education and 5.6 percent work in case management.

Click here for more information about AHA Hospital Statistics.