by According to a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, physician specialists make, on average, 52% more than do primary –care doctors. The national study which was done by researchers at the University of California at Davis looked at the wages of more than 6300 physicians practicing in 41 specialties in 60 communities during 2004 and 2005.Primary care physicians, which included pediatricians, geriatricians and internal medicine doctors, made much less than did orthopedics, neurologists, psychiatrists and other specialists.As J. Paul Leigh, a professor in the UC Davis Center for Health Care Policy and Research and lead author of the study, pointed out, “Addressing the generalist-specialist income gap is critical to increasing access to cost-effective preventive care.”Certainly, with the requirements of the new healthcare reform laws, the country will need more general practitioners and family doctors; and these statistics explain the ever-increasing shortage of primary doctors and one of the issues at hand to fill these spaces.
