Preliminary Stats on NP-Owned Practices
I spent the morning going through the submissions to the 2009 NP Entrepreneur of the Year competition. I was struck by how many of the entries are from very new practices: Just over a quarter are a year old or newer.
Of course, we have a special judging category for new practices, which encouraged new owners to enter, so our submissions might not be representative of NP-owned practices as a whole. To confirm the my impression, I checked some stats with our 2009 National Salary and Workplace Survey.
We're still collecting data, but based on responses from almost 1,100 NPs from so far, it looks like 22% of NP-owned practices have been open for 1 year or less, and the median age of NP-owned practices is 3 years. That makes sense when you note that the number of NP-owned practices has been increasing. Compared with all NPs, the number of practice owners is small but growing, up a percentage point from 2 years ago to 4%, according to our survey so far. The exciting news is that more than 10% of respondents said they plan to open their own practice in the next 5 years.
So what about older practices? One respondent listed a 25-year-old practice, and 15% indicate that their practices are 10 years old or older.
Finally, according to the survey so far, 57% of NP practice owners say they are very satisfied with their jobs. And they should be: The median annual salary for NP practice owners appears to be more than $109,000.
If you haven't yet, be sure to fill out the survey at http://nurse-practitioners.advanceweb.com/Article/Nurse-Practitioner-Salary-Survey.aspx. The more responses we get, the more reliable the data!