Newly certified general internists mainly choose hospital medicine as their career path, according to a study published online May 17 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Bradley M. Gray, Ph.D., from the American Board of Internal Medicine in Philadelphia, and colleagues measured changes in practice setting for general internists. A total of 67,902 general internists, comprising 80% of all internists certified from 1990 to 2017, were studied.
The researchers found that both hospitalists and outpatient-only physicians increased as percentages of general internists from 2008 to 2018 (25 to 40% and 23 to 38%, respectively). This increase was accompanied by a decline from 52 to 23% in the percentage of mixed-practice physicians, as these physicians mainly migrated to outpatient-only practice. By 2018, 71 and 8% of newly certified general internists practiced as hospitalists and outpatient-only physicians, respectively. Eighty-six percent of hospitalists in 2013 had the same practice type five years later. This rate of retention was similar across early-career and more senior physicians (85 and 86% for those initially certified in 1999 and 2012, respectively) and for the outpatient-only practice type (95%); the retention rate was 57% for the mixed-practice type.
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