The Alabama Board of Medical Examiners license form has two questions on primary care workload, namely primary care hours per week and primay care encounters per week. However, the statistics presented here must be taken with considerable caution. First, many physicians who are not in primary care nonetheless gave responses, and conversely, many physicians who are in primary care did not respond. Moreover, the data required considerable cleaning to eliminate ranges of values and to modify outrageously large values. With these caveats understood, the summary presented here may give useful information about physician workload.

Hours per Week

Summary Statistics

Distribution

The table and graph below give the distribution of PCPs by hours per week (grouped in 10 hour intervals), overall and for the rural/urban classifications.

As measured by hours per week, rural PCPs have higher workoads than urban PCPs.

Encounters per Week

Summary Statistics

Distribution

The table and graph below give the distribution of physicians by encounters per week (grouped by 20 encounter intervals), overall and for the rural/urban classifications.

As measured by encounters per week, rural PCPs have higher workoads than urban PCPs.