Primary care physician compensation has surpassed $266,000 a year, continuing to increase at a faster rate over the last five years than specialist pay at $443,000 as more doctors are rewarded to keep patients healthy, satisfied and out of the hospital. The Medical Group Management Association annual compensation survey is the latest analysis showing the shift to value-based models rewards those in primary care fields like internists, pediatricians and family practice doctors. The emphasis on primary care also keeps salaries up for these doctors who are in demand as physician staffing firm Merritt Hawkins’ analysis noted earlier this week. “Primary care is the lynchpin in providing preventive care and managing chronic conditions,” MGMA president and chief executive officer Dr. Halee Fischer-Wright said. “Health systems are increasingly recognizing and rewarding the important role physicians play in delivering high quality care at lower costs.” MGMA’s analysis shows median primary care doctor compensation rose 3.4% to $266,500 in 2018 from a year earlier. Meanwhile, specialists’ compensation increased 4.4% to $443,881 last year from $425,136 in 2017, according to the 2019 MGMA DataDive Provider Compensation, which comes from a dataset of 147,000 providers from more than 5,500 organizations including doctor, hospital and academic-owned practices. Over the last five years, median specialist compensation has risen 7.78% while all primary care compensation has risen 10.46% to $266,500 in 2018 from $241,273 in 2014. Though pay increases of specialist physicians have begun to increase as fast or in some cases faster than primary care doctors, the pay trend generally favors primary care doctors thanks to new value-based pay models from insurance companies and Medicare that reward primary care doctors who work to keep patients healthy and out of the more expensive hospital setting. Practically all major insurers from Cigna to UnitedHealth Group are paying at least half of the doctors in their networks via value-based care models. And these trends will impact future pay as they intensify. “As medical practices enter into more sophisticated value-based arrangements, physicians are seeing modest increases in income due to their significant role in reducing healthcare costs,” Fischer-Wright said. “Value-base contracts reward physicians for reducing acute hospitalizations, limiting expensive tests, and preventing hospital readmissions.” Source
