The AMA released updated statistics on private practice ownership that included: In 2018, 47.4% of practicing physicians were employed, while 45.9% owned their practices, according to a new entry in the AMA Policy Research Perspectives (PRP) series. The PRP is based on data from the 2018 AMA Physician Practice Benchmark Survey, which included 3,500 physicians from 50 states and the District of Columbia who provide at least 20 hours of patient care weekly and do not work for the federal government. According to the AMA, the rate at which physician ownership is falling is slower today than it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The share of physicians who are owners fell by more than seven percentage points in the six years between 2012 and 2018, data from the Benchmark Surveys shows. During the six-year span between 1988 and 1994, ownership fell 14.4 percentage points, from 72.1% in 1988 to 57.7% by 1994. In 2018, 10% of physicians were employed in practices that are entirely owned by other physicians, also called private practice. In total, and including the practice owners and the physician employees and independent contractors who work for them, more than half of physicians—54% in 2018—worked in practices that are entirely owned by physicians, according to the PRP. That number is down from 2012, when the share stood at 60.1%. But the numbers indicate the downward trend has been slowing because half of the shift occurred in just the first two years of that six-year period.
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