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When it comes to physician compensation, there are many different elements that ought to be considered to ensure that compensation is allocated in as far of a way as possible. There are several ways that you can ensure that your compensation is fair throughout the interview and decision-making process. In this post, we examine what a physician compensation model is, explore the benefits that you can enjoy with fair, software-based physician compensation solutions, and review different ways that you can assure adequate and fair compensation throughout the interview process.

What is a physician compensation model?

A physician compensation model is a framework that enables physicians to be paid fairly and effectively no matter what form of payment they take. There are many different types of compensation models for physicians, including:

• Pay-per-performance model. This type of model is gaining traction and is extremely effective at preserving the incentive for providers to uphold preventative wellness as much as possible, and offers patients a more consistent and higher level of care. These models often include bonuses outside of base pay, which are determined by the success and health of the clients.

• Equal share pay model. This model is more commonly found among shared practices and groups of physicians and allows for every provider to take an equal amount of pay out of the original revenue rate after all expenses have been covered for the month. This is less common and could lead to inadequate reimbursement and payment for physicians over time.

• Straight pay salary model. This is commonly encountered in larger medical organizations and hospitals across the nation and offers providers confidence inconsistent amounts of payment that are not determined by organizational revenue. This model is generally fair and consistent, however, it can limit the incentivization of providers to seek preventative wellness measures and higher levels of care for their patients after their already-heavy caseload.

Protecting your right to fair pay throughout the interview process

When you are undergoing the interview and job selection process, it can feel overwhelming. You likely are dealing with a high amount of debt, high-pressure selection processes, and an overall feeling of uncertainty that you’ll be able to be compensated at the rate that you need in order to satisfy your daily expenses. There are many steps that you can take to assure your ability to earn fair compensation as a physician in any healthcare setting, which we’ve outlined below:

Calculate and determine your expenses

A strong first step to ensure that you walk away from the interview with a suitable rate of compensation is to first outline your needed expenses and expected revenue. This is an important step in the pre-interview process and can help you to set adequate expectations and gain the confidence you need to communicate your needs in the interview process. Often, healthcare organizations are willing to invest more into high-quality staffers, even if you’ve just recently graduated. Coming prepared, confident, and ready to engage can instill confidence in your interviewing team, and help them to more readily make their decision in accordance with your payment preference.

Prepare ahead of time for the negotiation process

Often, new graduates and seasoned physicians alike may not be up to date on what average physicians in their specialty and status are earning. This can be a point of weakness in the negotiation process, and it is important to anticipate and prepare for this ahead of time. Using sites such as Indeed.com and Glassdoor can help you to estimate your quantitative worth for compensation purposes, and go in with strong negotiation discussion points for the interview.

Review every agreement

As you navigate the interview and onboarding process, be sure to review every single agreement, document, and requirement that the organization is asking of you. Often, lost pay or unexpected tasks can hide in the fine print of engagement documents, and it is important to be prepared.

Practice Owners: Is optimizing your physician compensation system worth it?

While there are additional forms and combinations of these models that are available for providers to take advantage of, they are all oriented toward the same goal: provide adequate compensation for practitioners that inspires them to consistently provide higher levels of care for patients.

No matter what compensation model you choose, investing in a software-based payment solution can unlock new opportunities for your business, and ensure that your providers receive adequate, fair, and routine compensation. There are many other benefits that you can enjoy when you choose a software-based solution to automate and regulate your compensation practices, outlined below:

Enhanced ability for consistency and compliance and field regulations

There are several governmental and field-based regulatory bodies that have different compliance requirements that your health organization must abide by as it relates to physician compensation. Doing the research needed and manually updating your policies and procedures is extremely time-consuming, runs a high risk for human error, and is generally less effective. The IRS, the Fraud and Abuse institute, and the famous Stark Law are all guiding regulations and requirements as it relates to physician compensation. Investing in a centralized compensation solution saves incredible time, money, and team effort, allowing you to direct your attention to higher-level tasks.

Less margin for human error in the compensation calculation

Physician compensation is complex and extremely nuanced. Because of this, manual calculation processes can be filled with pitfalls and potential for error, reducing the provider’s trust and overall perception of the organization, as well as opening the organization up to legal action or professional complaint. Your team of providers deserves to have confidence in clear, concise, and collaborative approaches when it comes to compensation, no matter what model you choose.

Additional insights surrounding productivity and performance

Using a software solution for physician compensation in your healthcare organization can enable you to take advantage of additional data and insights. With software such as FeePulse’s end-to-end solution, you can get real-time data around productivity, patient retention, and more. This is especially useful if you are employing a pay-per-performance model, or are looking to create new benefits programs to further incentivize your team members.

Physicians serve a vital role in the medical field and require a compensation strategy that allocates for the diversity of their work and role. This is especially true in the post-pandemic era, as physician burnout is on the rise. According to Mayo Clinic, 42% of physicians currently report being burned out in the profession. Value-based care provides valuable benefits to physicians in this position and can be a strategy that organizations use to prevent further burnout from occurring. In this article, we discuss what value-based physician compensation is, and how it can benefit your organization.

What is value-based physician compensation?

Value-based compensation is a framework that is being popularized throughout the medical field. The core concept of the strategy is that physicians are given financial incentives to encourage physicians to offer preventative care options to patients. The overarching goal is to keep patients in a healthier space and minimize the instances of them coming in to seek higher-level treatment.

The emphasis placed on preventative care and self-screening may help reduce instances of chronic or misdiagnosed illnesses. The physicians would then be compensated for their efforts and adherence to key performance indicators (KPI’s) determined by their governing organization, such as adhering to care standards and pre-set processes. This ideology is supported by a variety of higher-level healthcare organizations, such as the American Academy of Family Physicians.

What are the benefits of the value-based compensation framework?

There are many benefits to a value-based compensation system for physicians. We’ve compiled a list below:

Health care spending is reduced for purchasers and payers

In the value-based model, the goal is to have preventative wellness be pervasive among society naturally, and shift the societal focus from treatment of illness to the preservation of wellness. Because of this, experts believe that this model will help to significantly reduce payer costs, making healthcare more accessible at a more tolerable level for physicians than the current caseload.

Although the overall spending may be reduced, physicians will still be preserving their compensation and incentivized benefit payments based on their performance and ability to keep their patients well. Many healthcare organizations see this as a mutually beneficial strategy for both physicians and patients, allowing them to shift focus and resources from treating preventable illnesses to addressing more complex cases in their communities.

Collaboration is encouraged as physicians practice in their specialty

If this approach were to be adopted, physicians could have the needed time and resources to allocate to each patient, as the strain and caseload would be far reduced from what it is today. This offers doctors new opportunities to collaborate within their own areas of expertise on behalf of a patient and reduces instances of mistakes, missed details, and misdiagnosis for patients. Collaborative care also benefits the patients and offers them a more comprehensive view of their illness and prognosis. They may also feel as if they have received a higher level of care, as they were able to have the physician’s full attention for the duration of their appointment.

Patient satisfaction and preventative wellness rates increase

In this framework, patient satisfaction is helpful to encourage them to participate further in preventative measures and to take ownership of their own health. This not only benefits patients but also providers as well — helping them to meet their key performance standards set forth by their professional organizations. Providers are then incentivized to offer the patient the best experience possible to encourage them to self-manage their health journeys where appropriate.

Healthcare becomes more accessible to all

Currently, insurance companies have risen their costs to ensure that they can cover the current cost of care for their spectrum of patients. The value-based model is essential to consider, as it can also lower costs for insurance entities as well. Because of the drop in cost, these companies will be encouraged to lower their rates, in turn, to allow more people to come into the health plan. They will be inclined to do this in order to remain competitive among their other competing agencies. The lowered costs could make healthcare more accessible to patients than ever before, and help them to seek higher levels of necessary care to return to full health.

Patient benefits from strategic classification and care

Finally, this model helps patients to be treated in a more strategic manner, keeping their needs at the forefront of treatment. Patients can collaborate within an organization and across specialties to classify patients based on a variety of risk factors and facets of their case. This helps to prioritize more at-risk patients and work effectively throughout the patient group to ensure that all needs are addressed in a timely manner. This is also a great way to help physicians to reach key performance indicators quickly, further incentivizing and compensating them for their organizational efforts.

Physician compensation requires a centralized and digitized approach

When considering the dynamics of physician compensation, it is important to maintain a consistent, centralized, and digitized approach. FeePulse is your premier solution to address physician compensation in your healthcare organization. We offer cloud-based, user-friendly solutions that streamline your payment and reporting process. Compensation execution can be resource-intensive and difficult to complete given the varying types of compensation that your team may be eligible to receive, which is where FeePulse can help. For more information about how your team can benefit from FeePulse, please contact us today at 848-200-0448

To drive over Employee compensation is turning out to be a massive stumbling block these days it also counts as one of the biggest operating expenses of an organization. To put an end to all hitches faced in this area, Compensation Management Software was developed.

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While hospitals and healthcare systems are operating in a turbulent economic environment after the COVID-19 outbreak, the need for standard, cost-based physician compensation plans has intensified.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the median loss of surgery for physicians in the healthcare system remained severe. Many factors contribute to the financial losses of working doctors – the costs associated with on-board doctors and ramp-up, management, revenue cycle, and other surgical costs. (from administrative and billing support to technology and supply chain costs); that all this affects the end result of the medical business; but physician compensation is typically the largest line item on the physician enterprise P&L.

The shift to amount-based payments, although slower than expected, is still ongoing. Although 56 percent of healthcare organizations participated in cost-based contracts and only 34 percent of payments were tied to an amount, the extent to which a payment is directly tied to quantity is still declining. experience during COVID-19.

The rapid pace of consolidation has led to closed healthcare systems and, in some cases, separate service lines. Physician compensation can be an obstacle to service line integration; Without standardized compensation plans and the ability to link physician compensation to the quality and cost of care, adapting physician performance within integrated service lines, thereby reducing patient leakage, has become a daunting task.

Before the pandemic, almost 44% of physicians reported burning sensations. The American Medical Association has expressed concern that the number of physician burnout is rising during the coronavirus pandemic. Burnouts can be dangerous and contagious and can affect continuity and ultimately successful recruitment efforts. With COVID-19 comes a serious disruption of elective procedures, how much primary care and special care – a scenario no physician compensation plan could have anticipated. With operating losses per physician already on an upward trend, organizations must consider whether to act to address only the issues faced in 2020, or whether now is the time to restructure compensation to de-emphasize productivity measures and continue the evolution towards next-generation value-based compensation models.

As organizations work to address pandemic issues and see the impact on every physician and the entire medical industry, they should also begin the necessary work of moving away from entirely productivity-based compensation models towards those that reward efforts at succeeding in a value-based environment.

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