Survey: Many Docs Feel Overworked, Will Cut Back

According to a survey released today, many primary care doctors in the United States feel overworked and approximately half plan to either cut back on how many patients they see or quit medicine entirely.

Conducted by the Physicians' Foundation, the survey also noted that 60 percent of 12,000 general practice physicians discovered they would not recommend medicine as a career.

Doctor's groups are lobbying for action to decrease their workload and hold the line on payments for treating Medicare, Medicaid and other patients with federal or state health insurance.

The Physicians' Foundation, founded in 2003 as part of a settlement in an anti-racketeering lawsuit among physicians, medical societies, and insurer Aetna Inc., sent surveys to 270,000 primary care doctors and 50,000 practicing specialists.

The 12,000 answers are considered representative of doctors as a whole, according to the group, with a margin of error of about 1 percent. It reported that 78 percent of those who responded believe there is a shortage of primary care doctors.

Other survey findings indicate:

* More than 90 percent said the time they devote to non-clinical paperwork has increased in the last three years and 63 percent said this has caused them to spend less time with each patient.

* Eleven percent said they plan to retire and 13 percent said they plan to seek a job that removes them from active patient care. Twenty percent said they will cut back on patients seen and 10 percent plan to move to part-time work.

* Seventy six percent of physicians said they are working at "full capacity" or "overextended and overworked".