Medicine
The inexorable yearly rise of medical school tuition has led to corresponding increases in medical student debt. According to the American Medical Association, 86 percent of graduating medical students in 2011 had loans to repay, and their average debt was more than $160,000. The greater long-term income potential from choosing a subspecialist rather than a primary care career is only one of many factors that influence medical students' specialty choices. That being said, my students increasingly ask if they will be able to repay their loans, support spouses and children, and save enough for retirement on a family physician's income - a question that would have been unlikely to come up a generation ago.
In an innovative analysis published in Academic Medicine, researchers from the American Association of Medical Colleges and Boston University concluded that the answer is "yes." Using economic modeling software, they examined variety of loan amounts and repayment scenarios projected against average household expenses in a high-cost urban area (Boston) and income levels for primary care and subspecialist physicians. The bottom line:
Our economic modeling of a physician's household income and expenses across a range of medical school borrowing levels in high- and moderate-cost living areas shows that physicians in all specialties, including primary care, can repay the current median level of education debt. At the most extreme borrowing levels, even for physicians in comparatively lower-income primary care specialties, options exist to mitigate the economic impact of education debt repayment.
The authors defined "extreme" borrowing levels as $250,000 or greater, and noted that options for these highly indebted physicians include extended repayment terms and federal loan forgiveness programs such as the National Health Service Corps. They also noted that physicians who choose to live in rural or low-cost areas will have considerably more discretionary income after expenses.
Although this analysis did not address the equally (and some would say, more) important question of why the primary care-subspecialist income gap exists and what can be done to reduce it, these findings should be reassuring to students considering family medicine careers.
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The above post first appeared in the AFP Community Blog.
- Primary Care, Medical School Debt, And Us Health Needs: Analysis From The Graham Center
. Bob Phillips MD, Executive Director of the Robert Graham Center, the American Academy of Family Physicians’ (AAFP) DC-based policy center, gave one of the plenary speeches at the recent annual meeting of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine...
- Strengthening The Primary Care Pipeline
Recently, I had a vivid dream in which I and several family physician colleagues had gathered in a lecture hall to watch the results of the National Residency Match on a huge real-time video screen. On the right side of the screen were the names of all...
- Re-priming The Primary Care Pipeline
If you've been reading this blog since its inception, you are now well aware that primary care is essential to any high-performing health system, including those in other countries, but that the "pipeline" for primary care physicians in the U.S. has...
- Reform Primary Care First, And Health Care Will Follow
I mentioned in an earlier posting that fewer medical students each year are choosing to pursue careers in the primary care specialties (family medicine, general pediatrics, and general internal medicine). The reasons for the decline have been documented...
- How Much Should Medical School Cost?
It does not seem that many people care very much about the cost of medical education in the US. But we should be concerned. Did you know that the average debt for a medical student on graduation from a state funded medical school is about $150,000. To...
Medicine
Yes, family medicine is an affordable career choice
The inexorable yearly rise of medical school tuition has led to corresponding increases in medical student debt. According to the American Medical Association, 86 percent of graduating medical students in 2011 had loans to repay, and their average debt was more than $160,000. The greater long-term income potential from choosing a subspecialist rather than a primary care career is only one of many factors that influence medical students' specialty choices. That being said, my students increasingly ask if they will be able to repay their loans, support spouses and children, and save enough for retirement on a family physician's income - a question that would have been unlikely to come up a generation ago.
In an innovative analysis published in Academic Medicine, researchers from the American Association of Medical Colleges and Boston University concluded that the answer is "yes." Using economic modeling software, they examined variety of loan amounts and repayment scenarios projected against average household expenses in a high-cost urban area (Boston) and income levels for primary care and subspecialist physicians. The bottom line:
Our economic modeling of a physician's household income and expenses across a range of medical school borrowing levels in high- and moderate-cost living areas shows that physicians in all specialties, including primary care, can repay the current median level of education debt. At the most extreme borrowing levels, even for physicians in comparatively lower-income primary care specialties, options exist to mitigate the economic impact of education debt repayment.
The authors defined "extreme" borrowing levels as $250,000 or greater, and noted that options for these highly indebted physicians include extended repayment terms and federal loan forgiveness programs such as the National Health Service Corps. They also noted that physicians who choose to live in rural or low-cost areas will have considerably more discretionary income after expenses.
Although this analysis did not address the equally (and some would say, more) important question of why the primary care-subspecialist income gap exists and what can be done to reduce it, these findings should be reassuring to students considering family medicine careers.
**
The above post first appeared in the AFP Community Blog.
- Primary Care, Medical School Debt, And Us Health Needs: Analysis From The Graham Center
. Bob Phillips MD, Executive Director of the Robert Graham Center, the American Academy of Family Physicians’ (AAFP) DC-based policy center, gave one of the plenary speeches at the recent annual meeting of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine...
- Strengthening The Primary Care Pipeline
Recently, I had a vivid dream in which I and several family physician colleagues had gathered in a lecture hall to watch the results of the National Residency Match on a huge real-time video screen. On the right side of the screen were the names of all...
- Re-priming The Primary Care Pipeline
If you've been reading this blog since its inception, you are now well aware that primary care is essential to any high-performing health system, including those in other countries, but that the "pipeline" for primary care physicians in the U.S. has...
- Reform Primary Care First, And Health Care Will Follow
I mentioned in an earlier posting that fewer medical students each year are choosing to pursue careers in the primary care specialties (family medicine, general pediatrics, and general internal medicine). The reasons for the decline have been documented...
- How Much Should Medical School Cost?
It does not seem that many people care very much about the cost of medical education in the US. But we should be concerned. Did you know that the average debt for a medical student on graduation from a state funded medical school is about $150,000. To...