Report details

For the report, AMA surveyed 5,000 physicians who have completed residency, provide patient care for at least 20 hours per week, are not employed by the federal government, and practice in one of the 50 U.S. states or the District of Columbia.

Overall, AMA found that the percentage of surveyed physicians in private practice has dropped significantly in recent years, going from 60.1% in 2012 to 42.2% in 2024.

However, there were some specialties that were more likely to remain in private practice than others. For example, 70.4% of survey respondents working in ophthalmology worked in a private practice, as did 54% of those working in orthopedic surgery and 51.2% of those working in surgical subspecialties.

Of the other physicians surveyed, the majority were employed by hospitals. AMA found that the percentage of physicians working in hospital-owned practices increased from 23.4% in 2012 to 34.5% in 2024.

Similarly, the percentage of physicians working as a direct hospital employee or contractor increased from 5.6% in 2012 to 12.2% in 2024.

AMA also found that the percentage of physicians who described their employment status as "owners" dropped significantly, down from 53.2% in 2012 to 35.4% in 2024. Meanwhile, physicians who described their employment status as "employee" increased from 41.8% in 2012 to 57.5% in 2024.

According to the report, the top reasons physicians sold their private practices were to:

• Better negotiate higher payment rates with payers (70.8%)
• Improve access to costly resources (64.9%)
• Better manage payers' regulations and administrative requirements (63.6%)
• Ease participation in risk-based payment models (55.1%)
• Increase availability of additional services that patients need (48%)
• Better compete for employees in the labor market (48.9%)

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*Advisory Board is a subsidiary of Optum. All Advisory Board research, expert perspectives, and recommendations remain independent.