{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/physicians-all-other/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Physicians, All Other",
    "soc_code": "29-1229",
    "category": "Healthcare",
    "us_employment": 342720,
    "median_annual_wage": 265930
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 82,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 13,
    "embodiment": 14,
    "liability_shield": 20,
    "trust_premium": 17,
    "judgment_accountability": 18
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "A hospitalist's day already runs on tasks models touch — differential generation from chart data, discharge summary drafting, sepsis and deterioration flags, nuclear medicine first-pass reads — but the bedside exam, the family goals-of-care conversation, and the decision to admit or send home on incomplete history stay with the physician, which lands it at 13 rather than the 16+ of a purely procedural specialty.",
    "embodiment": "Occupational medicine physicians do worksite walkthroughs and fitness-for-duty exams, hospitalists round on floors and place central lines, nuclear medicine physicians supervise radiopharmaceutical administration — hands on bodies in rooms that are not controlled, but a meaningful slice of this bucket (preventive medicine, public health) works from a desk, which keeps it at 14 instead of a surgeon's 18.",
    "liability_shield": "Every one of these roles requires an unrestricted state medical licence plus DEA registration to prescribe, board certification for hospital credentialing, and the physician's own name on the order, the death certificate, and the malpractice claim — there is no ceiling above 20 and nothing here that keeps it below it.",
    "trust_premium": "A patient accepts a cancer staging read or a return-to-work restriction largely because a named, credentialed physician stands behind it, and hospitalists build that trust in days rather than years of continuity, which is why this sits at 17 and not the 20 of a lifelong primary care panel.",
    "judgment_accountability": "This is the physician who decides whether an ambiguous PET finding warrants biopsy, whether a worker with borderline pulmonary function can wear a respirator, whether to escalate a deteriorating inpatient to the ICU at 3am — calls made on partial data with mortality or livelihood on the line, though clinical guidelines and institutional protocols narrow the space enough to keep it under 20."
  },
  "rationale": "This is a catch-all SOC bucket — occupational and preventive medicine physicians, nuclear medicine, hospitalists, aerospace and public-health physicians — so the modal worker mixes patient examination and procedures with documentation, chart review, and interpretation. AI already drafts notes, codes encounters, summarizes literature, and produces first-pass image and lab interpretations, which strips real hours from the day. What does not move is the licensed physical exam, the procedure, the prescription signature, and personal liability for a diagnostic call made on incomplete information.",
  "outlook": "Demand stays strong and licensure holds, but documentation and interpretation hours compress hard — the physicians who thrive are the ones who convert freed time into procedures, complex decisions, and direct patient contact rather than higher chart volume.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: as ambient documentation (Nuance DAX, Abridge) and first-pass image/lab interpretation absorb the routine tier, the residual day concentrates in the judgment tier — equivocal findings, multi-morbidity, disability and fitness-for-duty determinations, outbreak calls. The remaining hours are precisely the ones current models cannot close.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Occupational and aerospace medicine specifically: if FAA aeromedical certification, DOT medical examiner certification, or workers'-comp IME rules continue requiring a named, in-person certified examiner whose signature the employer/insurer is buying, the premium is on the human attestation itself, not bedside manner.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "If medical boards or malpractice insurers formalize a duty to override AI recommendations — e.g. carrier policy language requiring documented independent physician reasoning where the clinician departs from or accepts an algorithmic output — the physician becomes the explicit accountable party for the model's errors, which raises rather than lowers the ownership of ambiguous calls.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "liability_shield is maxed at 20; judgment_accountability and trust_premium have little headroom. Realistic ceiling is high-80s. The genuine downside risk is not deregulation but volume: if AI raises per-physician throughput in chart-heavy subspecialties (nuclear medicine reads, preventive-medicine population work), headcount can fall while every remaining role stays safe."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 256670,
        "wage": 239200
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 305260,
        "wage": 223410
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 310080,
        "wage": 236000
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 315360,
        "wage": 239200
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 342720,
        "wage": 265930
      }
    ],
    "from": 2021,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 33.5,
    "comparable_from": 2021,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}