What exactly do the Physician Survey estimates in HSCdataOnline represent?
The Physician Survey sample consists of physicians in the contiguous U.S. (and Alaska and Hawaii starting with the 2008 survey) providing direct patient care for at least 20 hours per week, excluding federal employees, specialists in fields in which the primary focus is not direct patient care, and foreign medical school graduates who are only temporarily licensed to practice in the U.S. The sample has been assigned weights that adjust for systematic nonresponse and allow the sample to be used to make nationally representative estimates. Therefore, the estimates provided in HSCdataOnline are nationally representative for this group of physicians for the time period of the surveys (1996-97 for Round 1, 1998-99 for Round 2, 2000-01 for Round 3, 2004-05 for Round 4, and 2008 for the Health Tracking Physician Survey).
