Inflation continues to outpace physician compensation increases
Just as medical practices have begun to put COVID’s impact on staffing, productivity and compensation in their rearview mirror, new data have revealed what the industry’s next hurdle will be—inflation.
A new report from the Medical Group Management Association suggests that although physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs) have received bumps in their average overall compensation, those pay increases have been outpaced by inflation.
The new data summary report, Benchmarking for the Future of Your Physician and APP Workforce, contains insight from nearly 190,000 providers across 6,800 organizations. Some key takeaways from the report include:
In 2022, primary care providers’ median total compensation grew by 4.41%, doubling the increase tallied in 2021 (2.13%). However, that growth did not keep pace with inflation during that same time period, which was at 7% and 6.5%, respectively.
Growth in compensation was not consistent across specialties. For example, urgent care physicians saw growth of approximately .13% between 2021 and 2022, while family medicine specialists saw a 10.57% increase. On the other side of that coin, surgical and nonsurgical specialists saw their growth in 2022 decrease slightly from their 2021 figures.
Advanced practice providers’ (nurse practitioners, physician assistants, etc.) growth in compensation also declined slightly in 2022, decreasing from 3.98% in 2021 to 3.7%.
Compared to prepandemic benchmarks, productivity (based on work RVUs, total RVUs, professional collections and charges) saw slight increases in 2022. The differences in collections ranged from $96,580 to $172,221 between PCPs, surgical and nonsurgical specialists and APPs.
The biggest change in work RVUs was seen in dermatology, hematology/oncology and family medicine.
Physician-owned practices reported higher productivity in comparison to hospital-owned practices.
The report indicates that staffing shortages remain a hurdle in recovering productivity at practices. MGMA suggests that the data contained in the report could help guide practices in developing compensation models that will attract and retain talent.
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In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She joined Innovate Healthcare in 2021 and has since put her unique expertise to use in her editorial role with Health Imaging.