Surgeon Decline

In this recent WSJ article Surgeon Shortage Pushes Hospitals to Hire Temps - WSJ.com we see that more and more general surgeons are choosing other career paths. Many small community hospitals are finding it harder and harder to recruit and retain good general surgeons.

If you are the only available surgeon at your hospital, it means you are on-call 24/7 and this is not a very attractive idea when reimbursements are down and the hassles of practicing are up.

Locum tenens are the option many hospitals settle on, but this is a huge expense and just contributes to the ever rising healthcare costs.

There is no easy answer, but as the graph above shows, the steep decline is very worrisome!