Toward a Better Understanding of Primary Care Physician Career Typologies (LCA)

Principal Investigator: Erin Fraher, PhD, MPP

The purpose of this study is to use life course theory as a conceptual and methodological framework to investigate how race/ethnicity, age, and gender influence the practice patterns of North Carolina’s primary care physician workforce in different time periods, including whether the physician provides prenatal care, if s/he performs obstetric deliveries, the number of hours worked per week, the type of employment setting in which s/he practices (hospital, group clinic, solo practitioner, medical school etc.) and whether s/he practices in an underserved community. Using data collected on physicians between 2005 and 2019, we will test the following hypotheses:

1. Between cohort effects: Primary care physicians from URM groups who graduated medical school in different periods will exhibit different practice patterns than their white colleagues.
2. Intracohort gender effects: Different practice patterns will be observed for male and female primary care physicians of different race/ethnicities within the same medical school cohort.
3. Age effects: Male and female primary care physicians from URM groups will exhibit different practice patterns at the same age, depending on when they graduated medical school.