Physicians Expect Increase in Emoluments
Physicians are expecting a hike in their salaries. Expert opinion and survey statistics conducted on physicians’ emoluments have predicted an increase in salaries of physicians across the US. This would be a morale booster for overburdened physicians who have responded well to the challenges of quality patient care at affordable cost.
The Fact Box
A recent Physician Compensation Survey conducted by “The Hay Group,” a Philadelphia-based consulting firm, highlights the following issues:
- Salaries of primary care and specialty physicians are likely to increase slightly during 2014.
- Average salary of physicians is likely to increase by 2.4% in 2014.
- Doctors in group-based healthcare practices can expect 3.7% increase in salary as compared to 2.2% for those who serve in hospital-based settings.
- In 2013, for individual doctors, increases were noticed in performance benchmarks related to patient satisfaction (70%), quality of care (86%) and patient outcomes (54%), as compared with 2012 (66%, 77% and 39% respectively).
- For the grouped doctors, performance increases were observed for patient satisfaction (60% in 2013, compared with 50 % in 2012) and quality of care (69 % in 2013, compared with 56 % in 2012).
- For the first time in several years, doctors in nearly every specialty experienced at least 1% increase in annual salary.
- Orthopaedic surgery, Cardiology, Radiology, Gastroenterology, Urology, Anaesthesiology, Plastic surgery, Dermatology, General surgery, and Oncology (in this order) were the highest paid specialities.
Expert Opinion on Compensation Increase
Jim Otto, senior principal in Hay Group’s Healthcare Practice, justifies increase in physicians’ emoluments since they have to perform additional tasks, besides focusing on their core medical profession. These tasks include adapting to Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, keeping in sync with changing codes and modifiers, complying with federal and state regulations, and so on.
New Avenues for Salary Increase
Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) has recommended additional measures to be considered for physicians’ salary increase based on quality of care. Some of the criteria for increased emoluments are:
- When hospitals and clinics truly care for patients and respect the time of patients.
- When there is collaboration among clinicians.
- When the physician is taking care of the ‘most challenging’ patient care assignments.
- When there is absence of errors and preventable complications.
- When professional, technological, and ethical factors are incorporated.
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