City vs. country: No practice envy here

There's no place like home for this urban physician and his rural counterpart.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Sept. 9, 2002.

Robert L. Bowser, MD, and Thomas Garland, MD, aren't really that different. They are both 50-something family physicians and fathers. They both have hobbies -- albeit different ones -- and free time in which to pursue them.

They both have a couple thousand patients and, as their specialty suggests, they have established doctor-patient relationships with generations of the same family.

Yet because Dr. Bowser practices in Chicago, a city of almost 3 million, and Dr. Garland practices in Bellevue, Iowa, a town of 2,300, it is natural to assume that their lives and medical practices in no way resemble each other.

That would be wrong.

While the urban and rural lifestyles can indeed be very different, rural physicians do not amble through appointment schedules at the leisurely pace often equated with life outside the "hustle and bustle of the big city." And urban physicians do not race from exam room to exam room, spending only a few impersonal minutes with each patient they see.

The reality for both is somewhere in between.

Likewise, the reality of pay also defies conventional wisdom. It is often assumed that urban physicians are making significantly more than their rural counterparts. But a 2000 survey by the American Academy of Family Physicians found that rural family doctors averaged $132,300 in income in 1999, while urban family doctors averaged $134,400.

Neither Dr. Bowser nor Dr. Garland was comfortable discussing his own salary, but they were willing to talk in averages. [...]