Time is money: opportunity cost and physicians' provision of charity care 1996-2005.
OBJECTIVE
To test whether physicians' provision of charity care depends on their hourly wage.


METHODS
Secondary data from four rounds of the Community Tracking Study (CTS) Physician Survey (1996-2005). Data are nationally representative of nonfederal office- and hospital-based physicians spending at least 20 hours per week on patient care.


METHODS
A two-part model with site-level fixed effects, time trend variables, and site-year interactions is used to model the relationship between physicians' hourly wage and both their decision to provide any charity care and the amount of charity care provided. Salaried and nonsalaried physicians are modeled separately.


METHODS
Data from each round of the CTS were merged into a single cross-sectional file with 38,087 physician-year observations.


RESULTS
The association between physician's hourly wage and the likelihood of providing charity care is positive for salaried physicians and negative for nonsalaried physicians. Among physicians providing any charity care, hourly wage is positively associated with the amount of charity care provided regardless of salaried status. Practice characteristics are also significant.


CONCLUSIONS
The financial considerations of salaried physicians differ significantly from those of nonsalaried physicians in the decision to provide charity care, but factor similarly into the amount of charity care provided.
Wright
David Bradley
DB
Cecil G Sheps Center for Health Services Research, The University of North Carolina, 725 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, CB#7590, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. bradwright@unc.edu
D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010820:Physicians; D012456:Salaries and Fringe Benefits; D013997:Time Factors; D017664:Uncompensated Care / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*