ST. LOUIS, Dec. 5, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ECG Management Consultants, Inc., one of the nation's premier healthcare management consulting firms, has released the findings of its seventh annual Midwest Provider Compensation, Production, and Benefits Survey.
ECG's Midwest survey analyzes and reports information from 3,785 healthcare providers representing 3,377 physicians and 408 advanced practice clinical providers in seven Midwestern states. The survey reports critical data such as compensation-to-production ratios, including work and total relative value units (RVUs calculated by ECG from provider-level CPT code data); CPT procedure code distributions; and physician and advanced practice clinician (APC) benefit trends. Additional key market data points include provider work standards and specialty-specific provider data for recruiting, patient access, benefit package values, and malpractice. This information, coupled with ECG's interpretation of market trends, enables survey members to assess their performance relative to the competitive regional and national market.
General findings in the 2011 survey based on 2010 data are as follows:
- Compensation relative to work RVU production increased for Midwest primary care physicians by 5.9 percent as a result of compensation gains of 2.6 percent on declining work RVU production of 4.0 percent.
- A majority of Midwest organizations plan to modify their existing physician compensation plans to incorporate nonproduction-based components as a strategy to succeed under healthcare reform. Quality, patient satisfaction, and utilization are the most common components being considered for revised compensation plans.
- Retirement contributions decreased to $10,588 per physician, while benefit costs overall rose slightly to 15.0 percent of compensation as a result of increased health insurance premium costs and payroll taxes associated with higher compensation.
- In the Midwest, health system-employed groups continue to allocate significant funds to their physician entities of approximately $151,893,000 per physician per year, or 29 percent of collections. This is slightly higher than the national average of $148,791 reported by ECG in its national statistics.
- Of survey members responding, 100 percent employ APCs, and 81 percent are also currently recruiting for additional providers. A majority of survey members (53 percent) indicated that their recruitment of APCs is driven by the physician shortage.
"Organizations participate in our studies year after year in order to have access to consistent, clearly defined physician performance benchmarks, as well as data on the latest trends in national and regional provider compensation planning, benefits, work standards, advanced practice clinician employment practices, and provider recruiting," said Ms. Maria C. Hayduk, Senior Manager at ECG and head of its custom survey and proprietary research practice. In 2011, ECG introduced ECGVault, its online benchmarking portal made available exclusively to the 115 member organizations of the 2011 ECG provider compensation surveys, including members of our Northwest, Midwest, Southeast, and National Pediatric Subspecialty surveys."
"I am proud of the quality of the information we are producing in our surveys. For over 10 years we have calculated production from CPT-level data. That ensures the accuracy of our benchmarks but also provides ECG with the ability to benchmark outpatient clinical care and to identify variation," said Mr. James W. Lord, Principal of ECG's Healthcare – Midwest practice. "We use this critical information every day to help our clients craft innovative hospital/physician arrangements that recognize the intricacies of movement toward a value-based payment system."
ECG Survey Methodology
The Provider Compensation, Production, and Benefits Surveys are developed in partnership with local healthcare leaders and ECG's physician compensation and production experts. These experts go to extraordinary lengths to ensure data quality and validity. Raw survey data is reviewed by ECG's survey analysts, who identify outliers for verification by the surveys' participants; if data cannot be validated, it is removed. At the conclusion of this process, ECG converts the raw data into succinct, proprietary information.
About ECG Management Consultants, Inc.
ECG offers a broad range of strategic, financial, operational, and technology-related consulting services to healthcare providers. ECG provides specialized expertise in developing and implementing innovative and customized solutions that effectively address hospital/physician relationships, strategic and business planning, specialty program development, information technology, and the complexities of the academic healthcare enterprise. ECG has offices in Boston, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.ecgmc.com.
This information was brought to you by Cision http://www.cisionwire.com
http://www.cisionwire.com/ecg-management-consultants--inc-/r/ecg-management-consultants--inc--releases-findings-from-its-seventh-annual-midwest-provider-compensa,c9196567