New data suggests base salary impacts productivity and overall compensation for hospitalists. The lower the proportion of total compensation paid as base salary, the higher both productivity and overall compensation tend to be, according to the State of Hospital Medicine: 2010 Report Based on 2009 Data produced by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) and the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM).

Hospitalists caring for adults who received 50 percent or less of their compensation as fixed base salary reported the highest median work relative value units (wRVUs) at 5,407 compared to colleagues. Work RVUs is a term that refers to the ‘work’ component of the relative value unit system published by Medicare. Those who received 51 to 70 percent of their compensation as base salary performed 4,591 wRVUs as compared to 3,859 wRVUs for hospitalists who received 71 to 90 percent of their compensation as base salary. Individuals who received 91 to 100 percent of their compensation as base salary reported 3,571 wRVUs.

“Hospitalists are one of the fastest growing medical specialties and many of these physicians are being directly employed by hospitals,” said Jeffrey B. Milburn, CMPE, MGMA Health Care Consulting Group. “The compensation methodology has evolved from a straight base salary to base salary plus incentive, based on production and quality metrics.”

The reported median wRVUs were higher for physicians in practices that were not hospital-owned than for physicians in hospital-owned practices, and physicians working in practices that provide on-call coverage at night generated more wRVUs than those working in practices that provide on-site care at night. 

Internal medicine hospitalists reported median compensation of $215,000. Family practice hospitalists received $218,066 and pediatric hospitalists reported compensation of $160,038. The report also indicates compensation varies based on geographic location, practice teaching status and practice size.

“This new data will prove tremendously helpful to hospitalists and healthcare executives alike,” said William “Tex” Landis, MD, FHM, chair of SHM’s practice analysis committee. “While it is important to keep in mind that wRVUs cannot measure every work effort, this survey data will definitely support better decisions about how hospitalist practices are resourced, and it will ultimately promote delivering the best possible care to hospitalized patients across the country.”

State of Hospital Medicine: 2010 Report Based on 2009 Data contains information on 443 hospital medicine groups and 4,211 hospitalists. The voluntary survey is the first joint effort between MGMA and SHM in collecting data on hospital medicine groups, and it replaces SHM’s independent biannual survey (last published for 2007-2008).  The 2010 report also includes group-level data on compensation methodology, group size and staffing mix, turnover and growth, staffing models and night coverage models.

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