August 2010—Pinnacle Health Group’s 2010 compensation data revealed employment arrangements and new ancillary services as prevalent growth strategies for interviewed and placed hospitals and physicians. The data is based on actual placements & physician searches for 109 healthcare groups and 256 physicians during the 2008 and 2009 calendar years. Data was compiled from hospitals (75%), group practices (20%), and other settings (5%). Approximately 70% of the facilities included in the data were locating physicians on behalf of affiliated group practices. Around 90% of these participants placed physicians under the employment model, with the rest being solo practice / income guarantee.
Compensation trends. Employment of physicians continues to be prevalent. Almost all opportunities are offering employment arrangements as an option, and most physicians continue to seek employment-based jobs. Compensation, incentives and bonuses are being paid based on factors like work RVUs and/or collections, which has become a growing trend. The primary care shortage is creating an increased competition, which translates to high percentages of sign-on bonuses, loan repayments and health coverage among others.
New ancillary services. In private practices, physicians continue to seek ancillaries such as laboratory and x-ray services even if they compete with other hospitals. For employed physicians, the opportunity for ancillaries should be expected to be small. However, hospitals have given opportunities for ancillaries to select specialties. For instance, specialties like Orthopedics, General Surgery and Plastic Surgery can buy into a surgery center, while Radiology can buy into an imaging center.
Recruitment strategies. We don’t see a lot of change in the type of incentives used to attract those hard to recruit doctors. They continue to be: (1) Stipends for fellows; (2) Sign-on bonuses; and (3) School-on-repayment and relocation expenses.
Difficult specialties to recruit. While all specialties are hard, the trend has been that the traditional primary care doctor is becoming rare and considered to be the most difficult search right now. The next four are extremely difficult because they are specialties that are hard to recruit as well as ones with small numbers of physicians trained in that specialty. There are several others that are hard but because there is a larger pool of candidates it is considered to be slightly easier than searches like these: (1) Family Practice / Internal Medicine – Traditional (with inpatient); (2) Pediatric Surgery; (3) Pulmonary Critical Care; (4) Gynecological Oncology; (5) Boarded Emergency Medicine.
Select specialty compensation:
| 2008 | 2009 | ||
| Cardiology (inv) | $430 000 | Cardiology (inv) | $460 000 |
| Hospitalist | $175 000 | Hospitalist | $210 000 |
| Otolaryngology | $350 000 | Otolaryngology | $400 000 |
To get the full results of our compensation survey as published by Modern Healthcare Magazine for its August 2010 issue, click here for the complete, pdf version (download Acrobat Reader here) or call Mike Broxterman / Andrew Estialbo at 1-800-492-7771.