Ophthalmology had the highest private-practice rate of any specialty in 2024, at 70.4%, according to the American Medical Association. General surgery sat near the bottom, with under a third of general surgeons in a physician-owned practice that same year.
The AMA's 2024 Physician Practice Benchmark Survey polled 5,000 physicians and found that 42.2% of all physicians, across every specialty combined, were in private practice. That is 18 percentage points below the 60.1% recorded in 2012, the survey's first year. The overall figure hides how differently each specialty has held onto physician ownership, a gap that matters to any administrator benchmarking one practice against its peers.
Private practice by specialty
Surgical subspecialties post the highest private-practice rates. Ophthalmology leads at 70.4%, followed by orthopedic surgery at 54.0% and a combined group of other surgical subspecialties at 51.2%. General surgery breaks from that pattern. Under a third of general surgeons were in private practice in 2024, a rate closer to primary care than to other surgical fields. The AMA's specialty breakdown covers 16 groups, each built from a sample of more than 100 physicians, so the specialty-level gaps are not an artifact of small groups.
Radiology (46.9%) and anesthesiology (46.4%) both sit above 45%, as does obstetrics and gynecology (46.3%). Emergency medicine physicians had a private-practice rate of just 33.2%, despite working in the same facility-based settings as radiologists and anesthesiologists. The AMA's analysis of 2021 Medicare claims data found that more than 90% of emergency medicine physicians and anesthesiologists, and 62% of diagnostic radiologists, billed at least 75% of their allowed charges in a facility setting. Site of care alone does not explain the ownership gap between the three groups.
Primary care runs lower and in a tighter band. Pediatrics, general internal medicine, and family medicine all fell in the high 30% to low 40% range for private-practice ownership in 2024, below the 42.2% survey-wide average.
A decade of ownership change
The AMA has asked physicians the same ownership question every two years since 2012. The move away from physician ownership has been steady rather than sudden.
| Ownership type | 2012 | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Private (physician-owned) | 60.1% | 55.8% | 49.1% | 42.2% |
| Hospital-owned | 23.4% | 25.4% | 30.5% | 34.5% |
| Direct hospital employee or contractor | 5.6% | 7.4% | 9.3% | 12.2% |
| Private equity-owned | n/a | n/a | 4.4% | 6.5% |
| Other (insurer-owned or unlisted) | 10.9% | 11.4% | 6.8% | 4.6% |
Source: American Medical Association, "Physician Practice Characteristics in 2024," Policy Research Perspective, May 2025.
Private equity ownership was not tracked until 2020. In four years it grew from 4.4% to 6.5% of all physicians, a smaller share than hospital ownership but the fastest-growing category on a percentage basis. The other category, which folds in insurer-owned practices and write-in answers, shrank from 10.9% in 2012 to 4.6% in 2024, as the survey's newer, more specific ownership options gave physicians a clearer box to check.
When practices change hands
Among physicians whose practice is owned by a hospital, private equity firm, or insurer, the AMA asked when that ownership change took place. Across all owned practices, 41.6% were acquired before 2015, 15.3% between 2015 and 2019, and 15.1% after 2019. The remaining 28.0% did not know the acquisition date.
The timing looks different by buyer type. Only 10.0% of physicians in hospital-owned practices said the sale happened after 2019, versus 38.3% of physicians in private equity-owned practices. In the other direction, 47.2% of physicians in hospital-owned practices were acquired before 2015, compared with 17.1% in private equity-owned practices. Hospital acquisition is the older trend. Private equity acquisition is the newer one. For a practice that is still weighing a sale, the buyer type shapes not just price but how recently similar deals in that specialty have closed.
Size and structure track ownership type
Private practices stay small. 49.2% of physicians in private practice work in a group of fewer than 5 physicians, and only 11.8% are in a group of 50 or more. Hospital-owned practices run larger: 16.1% of physicians are in groups of fewer than 5, and 31.3% are in groups of 50 or more. Private equity-owned practices land at the large end too, with 32.6% of physicians in groups of 50 or more and just 12.9% in groups of fewer than 5.
Practice type follows the same split. 77.9% of physicians in private practice describe their practice as solo or single-specialty, versus 31.3% of physicians in hospital-owned practices. Multispecialty practice is far more common under hospital ownership, at 44.3% of physicians, compared with 20.5% of physicians in private practice. Private equity-owned practices sit closer to the private-practice pattern here, with 63.4% of physicians in a solo or single-specialty group and 27.7% in a multispecialty group.
Group size also splits along single-specialty versus multispecialty lines on its own, separate from who owns the practice. Among physicians in multispecialty groups, 40.6% work in a group of 50 or more and 29.0% work in a group of 10 or fewer. Among physicians in single-specialty groups, those shares flip: 10.5% are in a group of 50 or more, and 62.8% are in a group of 10 or fewer. A multispecialty label is, in practice, a reasonable proxy for a larger organization.
Fewer physicians hold an ownership stake
Ownership status, measured for the individual physician rather than the practice, moved the same direction. In 2024, 35.4% of physicians reported an ownership stake in their practice, down from 53.2% in 2012. The rest split between employees (57.5%) and independent contractors (7.1%).
The physician workforce grew over the same period, from an estimated 650,750 eligible physicians in 2012 to 737,195 in 2024. Even so, the AMA estimates around 80,000 fewer physicians were in private practice in 2024 than in 2012. For a practice administrator, the specialty mix inside a group is now one of the clearer signals of how long that group is likely to stay independently owned.
Sources
- American Medical Association, "Physician Practice Characteristics in 2024: Private Practices Account for Less Than Half of Physicians in Most Specialties," May 2025
- American Medical Association, "Smaller share of doctors in private practice than ever before," June 24, 2025
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