Discussion Groups / English Usage / August 2010

It tends to mean that he is based there, but not necessarily all the
time.  Perhaps he goes out to see patients, or works in different
hospitals on different days.

Yes. a person working out of somewhere may no physically be there most of
the time. For example a salesman may work out of the New York office but
since he travels would seldom be there. That office would just be where his
secretary was and maybe where he got his mail.

If he worked at the New York office I'd expect that he was there at least
daily.

Not really. There might be some implication that he's self-employed,
although affiliated with the Mission Ridge Medical Center, when 'works
out of' is used.

Others have said that there is a difference, but I say there isn't.
Logically there should be, but American English doesn't follow logic.

Consider the discussions that occasionally come up here about the
usage of "Megalith, Inc. is out of Peoria, Illinois".  You would think
that this means that Megalith is located in the outskirts of Peoria
or that Megalith has abandoned Peoria.  In fact, Megalith could be in
the city center and planning to stay.

Then there's the "based in" or "based out of" discussion.  Word
analysts say there's a difference, but Americans can use them
interchangeably to mean the same thing.

If your paragraph was not from a fictional accounting, you could very
well find that the child psychiatrist is office-bound at the Mission
Ridge facility, that he operates out of a satellite office that is not
in Boulder, or that he is a mobile psychiatrist driving from patient
to patient in an RV.

The wording of one American's statement would not preclude any of
these situations.