When Do Primary Care Physicians Retire? Implications for Workforce Projections

Abstract

Purpose: Retirement of primary care physicians is a matter of increasing concern in light of physician shortages. The joint purposes of this investigation were to identify the ages when the majority of primary care physicians retire and to compare this with the retirement ages of practitioners in other specialties.

Methods: This descriptive study was based on AMA Physician Masterfile data from the most recent 5 years (2010-2014). We also compared 2008 Masterfile data with data from the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System to calculate an adjustment for upward bias in retirement ages when using the Masterfile alone. The main analysis defined retirement as leaving clinical practice. The primary outcome was construction of a retirement curve. Secondary outcomes involved comparisons of retirement interquartile ranges (IQRs) by sex and practice location across specialties.

Results: The 2014 Masterfile included 77,987 clinically active primary care physicians between ages 55 and 80 years. The median age of retirement from clinical activity of all primary care physicians who retired in the period from 2010 to 2014 was 64.9 years, (IQR, 61.4-68.3); the median age of retirement from any activity was 66.1 years (IQR, 62.6-69.5). However measured, retirement ages were generally similar across primary care specialties. Females had a median retirement about 1 year earlier than males. There were no substantive differences in retirement ages between rural and urban primary care physicians.

Conclusions: Primary care physicians in our data tended to retire in their mid-60s. Relatively small differences across sex, practice location, and time suggest that changes in the composition of the primary care workforce will not have a remarkable impact on overall retirement rates in the near future.

Keywords: age factors; clinical medicine; primary care; primary care physicians; retirement.

Figure 1

Practice status of primary care physicians aged 50 to 90 years as reported in the 2014 American Medical Association Physician Masterfile. Note: The “Other Activities” category includes physicians not in clinical practice but professionally active in other ways (for example, in teaching, administration, or research); the “Dropped” category is made up of physicians who were listed in earlier years of AMA Physician Masterfile data but absent from the 2014 dataset. Data are derived from the AMA Physician Masterfile datasets for the years 2009 through 2014.

Figure 2

Percentage of primary care physicians involved in direct patient care who had a National Provider Identifier number in 2008, by sex and age. Data are derived from the AMA Physician Masterfile dataset for 2008 and from National Plan and Provider Enumeration System data for 2008.

Figure 3

Percentage of primary care physicians remaining in practice, by age and sex.

Figure 4

Median ages of retirement from clinical activity and from all professional activity for selected specialties, with interquartile ranges.