As reimbursement moves toward value-based payments, so are healthcare organizations slowly adjusting their physician compensation plans to factor in quality metrics.
A new report from healthcare human resources firm SullivanCotter found that most organizations still base physician compensation on productivity. But a third of organizations the firm surveyed said they also used performance-based metrics, like quality and patient satisfaction, in determining physician pay.
How they do so varies by organization and specialty, but the overall median percentage of cash compensation based on quality in the survey was 5 percent.
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“As reimbursement shifts from fee-for-service to value-based, we expect to see some shifts in the balance of the compensation elements that comprise physician compensation plans,” managing principal Kim Mobley said in the release of the report.
For its 2013 Physician Compensation and Productivity Survey Report, SullivanCotter surveyed 484 organizations employing some 91,000 healthcare providers.
Other trends that emerged were continued use of on-call pay (which nearly two-thirds of organizations used in 2013, up from less than half in 2012) and more generous benefits as part of physicians’ compensation packages, compared to those of other employees.
On average, median compensation for primary care physicians jumped 5.7 percent from 2012 to 2013, while medical and surgical specialists saw smaller increases of 3.2 percent and 2.3 percent, the firm reported.
That’s a bit of a shift from previous years, when the gap between PCPs and specialists has widened, Mobley noted in the release.
“With the expanded health care coverage and emphasis on preventative care, population health management and cost control, primary care physicians are in high demand as they are at the forefront of ensuring successful implementation of these initiatives.”
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