Compensation for specialties increasing while primary care slows
Compensation increased more than 5% for many specialties but only increased 3.6% among primary care specialties.
Photo: ER Productions Limited/Getty Images
In AMGA's newly released 2024 Medical Group Compensation and Productivity Survey, medical groups and healthcare organizations report an increase in compensation of 3.6% for primary care specialties, 5.1% for medical specialties, 5.5% for surgical specialties, and 5.8% for radiology, anesthesiology and pathology specialties in 2023.
Increases in primary care compensation have not been as significant this year as in 2021 and 2022, when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services updated median work relative value units (wRVU) values, which led to notable increases in compensation as seen in the 2022 and 2023 surveys.
For all other specialty types, compensation is rising in step with related productivity.
With data on more than 190 specialties included, the 2024 survey reveals that, compared to the compensation increases in primary care, other physician specialty types had relatively larger increases in compensation.
WHAT'S THE IMPACT?
When looking at the top three specialties in primary care (family medicine, internal medicine, and general pediatrics and adolescent medicine), median compensation changed from $298,726 in 2023 to $311,666 in 2024, an increase of 4.3%. Productivity also increased at a rate of 4.6%.
As for the top three medical specialties, which include more than 2,000 providers per specialty, median compensation increased more than 8%, while productivity increased almost 9%.
While the top medical specialties experienced an increase in compensation roughly equivalent to productivity (8.2% and 8.9% respectively), hospitalists – a large percentage of the medical specialties category – experienced more moderate compensation and productivity growth, at about 3% and 2.6%, respectively.
For the top surgical specialties, compensation and productivity increased 4.1% and 3.0%, respectively, with compensation per wRVU growth at 0.4%.
The increase in median compensation and wRVUs for advanced practice clinicians generally follows the pattern of that of physicians, though the impact was mixed across specialty types. APC production increased as much as 12.6% at median. These productivity increases demonstrate that APCs are being utilized as true providers, rather than to simply support physicians, authors contended. Thus, wRVUs traditionally allotted to physicians are accruing to APCS, who are now more engaged in clinical care.
THE LARGER TREND
An MGMA report from earlier this year showed that compensation climbed for physicians year-over-year due to increases in productivity and the use of AI.
Physicians are being pushed toward higher productivity than during the COVID-19 pandemic rebound years of 2021 and 2022, as providers continue to recover from economic and staffing challenges, the report said.
Primary care, surgical specialty and nonsurgical specialty physicians in independent practices all reported higher wRVUs in 2023 versus 2022.
An MGMA Data Mine report from March suggests physicians can increase productivity through hiring additional staff, but that also increases overhead costs.
Jeff Lagasse is editor of Healthcare Finance News.
Email: jlagasse@himss.org
Healthcare Finance News is a HIMSS Media publication.
