Alabama Physicians

Workload

The Alabama BME 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

Statistic	All	Rural	Urban
Count	3419	767	2652
Mean	35.4	38	35.4
Standard Deviation	15.8	13.8	16.3
Minimum	0	0	0
First Quartile	30	32	27.5
Median	40	40	40
Third Quartile	40	40	40
Maximum	136	100	136

Distribution

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

HPW	All	Rural	Urban
0--9	289	36	253
10--19	204	31	173
20--29	309	54	255
30--39	603	137	466
40--49	1,513	378	1,135
50+	501	131	370
Total	3,419	767	2,652

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

Encounters per Week

Summary Statistics

Statistic	All	Rural	Urban
Count	3347	758	2589
Mean	85.7	98.2	82
Standard Deviation	64.1	58.1	65.3
Minimum	0	0	0
First Quartile	48	60	40
Median	80	100	79
Third Quartile	115	125	100
Maximum	1500	600	1500

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 classification.

EPW	All	Rural	Urban
0--19	343	45	298
20--39	310	38	272
40--59	383	70	313
60--79	532	120	412
80--99	373	89	284
100--119	594	134	460
120+	812	262	550
Total	3,347	758	2,589

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