While the general feeling is to hunker down and wait for the recession to be over, the best predictions show that America will not start to recover at the consumer level until the fall of 2010. We think you’ll agree that this is a gap in income that any physician can still afford. What can you do to be proactive about making an income and helping your patients out during the recession?

1. Cut Back on Staff

Take a hard and cold look at your administrative staff. Are there people there who are just punching the clock that you’ve been ignoring because they are the cousin of a friend? Now is the time to cut them loose.

2. Contact All Of Your Patients

Send out a letter, an e-mail newsletter, or both letting your patients know that you are flexible in these times of financial hardships. How flexible is up to you; perhaps you want to arrange a monthly payment plan or some other form of deferred payment. Small discounts on checkups may be enough to get any fence-sitters into the clinic.

3. Contact Problem Patients by Phone

If you have patients that you know do not have coverage or may have recently lost their coverage, have your staff contact them and see if they can work out a customized plan with them that is tailored to their needs. You’ll generally find out about these as a result of the letter campaign.

4. List Helpful Organizations On Your Website

In your letter, e-mail newsletter, and website you may want to include a list of organizations that will assist with the costs of health care and prescription medications. Get in touch with your pharma company representatives and try to get samples out of them that you can give to needier patients. They will likely have a plan in place to help your patients as well. Some of these organizations can be found here.

Being proactive in this time of crisis will not just help your patients, but it will cement your relationship with your patients after the recession is over and drive your patient referrals through the roof.

For more tips see this article at Physician’s News.

Physicians seeking jobs after coming out of residency programs will be happy to know that their starting salaries are not as fixed as they might have expected.  Statistics show that physician salaries are on the rise.  The Medical Group Management Association, or MGMA, conducted a survey with 3,520 physicians and discovered in 2008 starting salaries went up for several specialties from the year prior.  The following five specialties exhibited the biggest changes in starting salaries, these major increases being from 10%-15%:

• Neurology: $200,000 to $230,000 – up 15%
• Non-invasive cardiology: $350,000 to $400,000 – up 14.29%
• Anesthesiology: $275,000 to $312,500 – up 13.64%
• Emergency medicine: $192,000 to $215,040 – up 12%
• Internal medicine: $150,000 to $165,000 – up 10%

While these numbers do not reflect salary increases for all specialties, one cannot help but feel optimistic.  The 10% rise in Internal Medicine salaries is encouraging enough, indicating that there might be hope for physician salaries in specialties that are normally lower such as Family Practice, Geriatrics and Pediatrics.

An article from the Wall Street Journal Health blog by Jacob Goldstein stated that nearly half of the family medicine residency slots in the U.S. went to foreign medical students and American medical students who graduated in previous years, while only 42% went to American medical students graduating in 2008.  In fact 9% of the residency slots for this specialty went unfilled.  It’s clear from these numbers that there is a shortage of family practitioners in the U.S.   The article goes on to compare the statistic that 84% of anesthesiology residency slots were filled in 2008 by American medical students graduating that year, and 15% of anesthesiology residency slots were filled by American medical students graduating in previous years.  Only 1% of the residency slots were not filled for anesthesiology.

With a growing shortage of family practitioners and primary care providers, we are bound to see more increases in physician salaries in the coming years.  We remain hopeful that primary care physicians will start making the kind of money they deserve so that our medical students are, once again, encouraged to pursue an area of medicine that every person needs.