Background

The full toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on frontline healthcare workers is still unfolding, but early data suggests it may be exacerbating physician burnout and accelerating physician retirement decisions According to Doximity’s 2021 “Physician Compensation Report” nearly three-quarters of physicians reported being overworked and 22% were consequently considering early retirement. We aimed to assess how the COVID-19 pandemic may have affected retirement planning of physicians within a large regional healthcare organization Methods

280 hospital physicians were distributed electronic surveys with the primary assessment of their perceived year of retirement in 2019 followed by which year they perceived themselves retiring post-COVID 19 pandemic. Secondary questioning was an optional response indicating their top 3 factors contributing to their change in retirement date; government mandates, insurance regulations/documentation, hospital system regulations, clinical duties, change in income, health, weather, family, or other. These responses were then compared to a pre-COVID physician market assessment performed in 2019. Using descriptive statistics, we compared expected changes within the hospital system and performed counts for the reported reason for change. Results

263 physicians responded, 32% of overall respondents (n=85) changed their proposed retirement year either earlier or later. 70.6% of respondents who changed their retirement date (n=60) expected to retire earlier than prior reporting, while 29.4% (n=25) expected to retire later. Family obligations (n=62), augmenting clinical duties (n=53), government mandates (n=47), and loss of reimbursement (n=45) were amongst the most popular citations for change-related reasoning. Of those expected to retire early, they advanced their retirement age by an average of 5.25 years. The 2019 physician assessment data predicted a 10.9% deficit in the hospital system work force by 2024. Our survey demonstrated a further net deficit of 5.3% of physicians advancing their retirement before 2024 and a total deficit of 16.2% in the local/regional physician work within 2 years of the COVID pandemic. Conclusions

Our findings are consistent with pandemic-related factors exacerbating early retirement planning and inflating our region’s expected future labor deficit. Further labor assessments of physician retirement planning are warranted on a larger scale study to confirm a worrisome trend in the national physician shortage.

References

Doximity. (2021, December). 2021 physician compensation report – c8y.doxcdn.com. 2021 Physician Compensation. Retrieved July 2022, from https://c8y.doxcdn.com/image/upload/v1/Press%20Blog/Research%20Reports/Doximity-Compensation-Report-2021.pdf