CareCloud and QuantiaMD recently released their 2nd annual Practice Profitability Index (PPI), a study crafted to measure U.S. physician practices on issues impacting their financial and operational health.

Since last year’s PPI, certain healthcare reform initiatives have begun affecting providers, like the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, the transition to ICD-10 and the meeting of Meaningful Use Stage 2 guidelines. These regulatory pressures stand to impact practice operations. Thus, the PPI again engaged with more than 5,000 physicians nationwide to take the pulse of their practices’ financial health — and the results are impacting.

These regulatory pressures, in addition to the ongoing decline in reimbursement rates and the uptick in administrative burdens, stand to have significant impact on how physician practices operate.

Year-Over-Year Highlights

• US physicians are now more than twice as likely to expect eroding profits in 2014.
• The percentage of doctors spending more than one day a week on paperwork rose from 50% to 70%.
• The percentage of physicians considering selling their practice ticked up from 21% to 24%.
• The amount of physicians seeking to enact operational changes this year is up 6% from last year’s report.
• In 2013, government reforms like ICD-10 were cited as obstacles to profitability. This year, fewer than 30% of respondents expected to be prepared for ICD-10’s original October 2014 deadline.