The Impact of Residency Training on the Productivity of Family Physicians

Because of a projected rapid increase in the proportion of family physicians who are residency graduates, it is important to understand the impact of residency training on practice patterns. In this study of the effect of family practice residency training on productivity, residency graduates were found to have seen 21.5% fewer patients per hour but to have spent commensurately more time per patient visit than did their counterparts without residency training. This relationship persisted even after controlling for a variety of physician and practice characteristics, including physician age, practice organization, and geographic region.