Where have all the doctors gone?

Are they all going to Kaiser? And even Kaiser is having issues keeping enough physicians on staff as other retire...BD

Kaiser Permanente's aggressive recruitment of Northern California doctors has been joined by a similar effort by the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, raising fears that the two health-care giants will deplete the area's supply of doctors. Kaiser has hired nearly 1,000 doctors regionwide in the last three years, including roughly 175 this year, 400 last year, and 375 in 2005, according to Dr. Robbie Pearl, executive director and CEO of the Permanente Medical Group.

Oken said small groups can pay new pediatricians between $90,000 and $125,000 in annual salary, while Kaiser reportedly starts at $140,000

And Kaiser loses more than 200 Northern California doctors each year to retirement, so "we're always hiring," Pearl told the Business Times. Pearl said Kaiser has eight applications for every job opening; the average age of its physicians is approximately 44, he said, or "about a decade lower than out in the (non-Kaiser) community, (where) they're facing a real crisis" in some specialties and geographic areas.

Doctors say they are feeling the pinch....medical schools such as UC San Francisco and Stanford University "aren't training very many primary care physicians," which at some point is likely to prompt Kaiser to recruit more doctors from farther afield.
"Our salaries are so low we have difficulty recruiting" against Kaiser, PAMF and the Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation, said Dr. Richard Oken, a pediatrician and managing partner of the nine-physician East Bay Pediatric Medical Group, which has offices in Berkeley and Orinda. On occasion, Kaiser also recruits entire outside medical practices into its Permanente Medical Group, as occurred recently with the Fremont Pediatric Medical Group, an eight-doctor practice that is moving to Kaiser "lock, stock and barrel" early next year, said Dr. Milton Wong, one of its physicians and a leader in its decision to move to Kaiser.