Turnover and Burnout Among Family Physicians

Physician burnout may be associated with leaving practice or moving to a new practice, resulting in clinician shortages, especially in primary care. Evidence suggests that patients who lose a primary care physician experience higher emergency department use and spending and lower care satisfaction and that a physician’s departure may have substantial financial consequences for health care organizations.Although leaving or changing practice has been associated with burnout within individual health systems, the extent to which burnout affects turnover nationally is not well understood. We linked repeated, cross-sectional national surveys of board-certified family physicians to Medicare claims data to examine the association between burnout and turnover.