A survey by CareCloud, a provider of practice-management resources, and QuantiaMD, a mobile community for physicians, finds that physicians are now more optimistic about their profits.
The report said that more physicians expect to see level profits next year, rather than a decline. For the last couple of years, physicians have been quite pessimistic about their profit outlook. U.S. physicians remain the world’s highest paid by a considerable margin.
About 35 percent of physicians said they expect profits to be about the same next year, up from 30 percent last year. About 31 percent said they expect profits to decline, down from 39 percent. And about 24 percent said they expect profits to rise next year, up from 19 percent.
Other findings:
•About 59 percent of expect to keep their practices, rather than sell or merge, up from 53 percent. This may signal a slowdown on the flood of physicians becoming hospital employees.
•The biggest ways they hope to improve their practices: improve billing and collections processes (40 percent), improve staffing (34 percent) and improve technology (33 percent).
