Name: Academic vs Community vs Private Practice | Best Doctor Career
Uploaded: 2025-11-13T17:57:15.000Z
Duration: 9 min 51 s
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Although your chosen specialty will have a major impact on your paycheck and work life balance, it's not the be all and end all.

The setting you choose to work in, whether it's academic, community or private practice, also plays a key role.

But what are the differences between these options and how do you know which one is best for you?

Dr. Jubbal medschoolinsiders.com first, let's define each kind of practice.

Academic hospitals are affiliated with medical schools or universities, including and these hospitals require more from you than just clinical practice.

In academic hospitals, you'll also be spending time teaching students and residents and doing research.

People sometimes use the term community medicine interchangeably with private practice, but

in reality they're comparing academic to non academic medicine.

In a community hospital, you're employed by the hospital and take on a more clinical role.

the majority of your work will be based in the hospital and its affiliated clinics.

Private practice differs from academic and community hospitals in the sense that you're not employed by the hospital.

Instead, you're either starting your own practice or joining a pre existing group, but

your practice can still be affiliated with community hospitals.

What are the pros and cons of each practice?

Let's break down the most important factors to consider.

Depending on your practice, there are a few differences in the kinds of patients you'll see, and

In community medicine or private practice, straightforward cases will be the bread and butter of your specialty.

That's not to say you won't occasionally see difficult cases, but

anything too complex will require more specialized care than what your hospital's resources have to offer.

Complex patients are usually referred to larger academic centers or where hospitals have more advanced diagnostic tools and specialized physicians specifically trained for these cases.

Academic medicine allows you to focus on a subset of patients.

For example, as an academic rheumatologist, you can do most of your research on lupus and tailor your practice toward treating lupus patients.

You'll become the expert at your hospital and colleagues will start referring their patients to you when more specialized care is needed.

However, this doesn't mean it will all be lupus.

When you're on service at the hospital, you'll still see a wider variety of patients.

On the other hand, in community medicine and private practice, you can expect a little bit of everything.

The general expectation is that you can confidently treat any disease in your specialty.

The Next big difference is the typical schedule of each practice.

As an academic physician, your responsibilities extend beyond seeing patients.

Another major part of the job is teaching students and residents.

Some of your time is also reserved for administrative tasks, especially if you're involved in a committee or take on a role as a director or chair.

If you're interested in research, you may have protected time for studies, but

this depends on your career goals and agreement with the university.

Some academic physicians realize they prefer research over seeing patients and ask for more protected time for their projects.

If you're employed in a community hospital, most of your time will be spent on clinical work since there's less teaching and research involved.

Even if you decide to work on a committee or take on another administrative role, the majority of your work still revolves around seeing patients.

This may sound ideal if you aren't particularly enthusiastic about research, but

clinical work is more intense than the slower paced life of academia.

Also, in community hospitals, you may not have residents or fellows to help shoulder the clinical burden of admitting patients and writing notes.

Private practice is similar to community hospitals since most of your time is spent seeing patients.

However, the time dedicated to administrative tasks may vary depending on your type of practice.

If you're part of a group, there's less administrative burden on you, but

if you're running a solo practice, you're running the show.

This means more of your time will be dedicated to running your day to day operations and administration, such as salaries and budgeting.

Another important difference between practices is your independence and autonomy, which are determined by the nature of your work.

If you're in academic medicine or a community hospital, you're most likely employed by the hospital.

When you're in private practice, you're the boss.

In private practice, you choose how you run your practice.

Administrative tasks are also more straightforward.

For example, if you need new equipment, there are no hospital guidelines to delay or deny your request.

You can order whatever you need, plus you don't have to deal with the politics associated with admin or hospital committees.

Private practice doctors also make more money than their employed colleagues, which we'll touch on in a second.

While all of this sounds like a pretty sweet deal, working in private practice is not without its cons, which include increased responsibility and financial risk.

When you're running your own practice, you're responsible for building it up from nothing and making it successful.

This involves learning how to handle your own billing and marketing, how to properly budget for overhead and staff salaries, and

There's also a much larger financial risk involved.

Plus, in private practice, your income is dependent on how much you work.

When you have a schedule that doesn't account for vacations or breaks, you're likely to see these breaks as missed opportunities to earn more money.

This increases your risk of burnout and ultimately could lead to a poorer quality of life.

Employed positions, whether in academia or a community hospital, have their pros and cons as well.

The pros of being an employee include a more stable income and less responsibility.

While your income as an employee won't be as high high as private practice, its stability is guaranteed.

Plus, as an employee, you don't need to be involved in many of the administrative tasks required to run a practice.

You also don't have to worry about marketing or budgeting for salaries, enabling you to focus on your specialty.

While more secure than running your own practice, being an employee is not without its drawbacks.

The cons of being an employee include politics, less income, and contract based employment.

As an employee, you answer to hospital administration, which may mean not getting your way.

It's undeniably frustrating to request new equipment and be denied.

You're also only protected for as long as you're under contract.

When your contract ends, you don't have any long term guarantees for what comes next.

Lastly, let's talk about the differences in pay.

There are two ways to approach this academic versus Non academic and employed versus Private practice For academics versus non academics.

Physicians in non academic settings can earn as much as $120,000 more a year than their academic colleagues.

This is where relative value units or RVUs come into play.

RVUs define the value of a service provided by a doctor relative to all other services and procedures.

It's a complex system that factors in all the different clinical work doctors do, such as appointments, procedures, consults, and

The number of clinical tasks required of a physician impacts how they're reimbursed.

Since academic physicians have non clinical duties such as teaching and research, they less time is available to provide care for patients, which generates fewer RVUs.

The amount of revenue a doctor generates for their hospital is reflected in their pay.

Non academic physicians have more time in the day for clinical tasks, which generates more RVUs for their hospital or private practice.

Now let's look at employed physicians versus doctors in private practice.

Physicians in private practice generally make more money than their employed colleagues.

In 2022, self employed physicians reported average earnings of $385,000, whereas employed physicians reported $320,000.

There's more than one reason for this salary gap the first and most obvious reason is Employees in any business aren't paid their true value.

If businesses, in this case hospitals, are expected to remain sustainable, then they must pay their employees less than their true value to account for administrative costs, overhead, operations and profit.

Another reason for this gap is a business owner's ability to adjust their exp if you own your practice, you can increase your revenue by optimizing your medical coding, reducing operating costs, and

Many employed positions, especially in academic hospitals, make you eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a program that can help you tackle your student loans.

So while private practice physicians have more opportunities to make significant bank, being employed could mean more money in your wallet early on.