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Pay for performance is a concept that is becoming more wide spread in Emergency Medicine. Basically it means that you are paid more if you do more work. That sounds simple but its actually not been the rule in a field dominated by hourly payment.
These systems run the gamut from plans that give small rewards to docs with the highest productivity to plans where all payment is based on productivity. The plans where your total compensation is based on your productivity are called fee for service or eat what you kill plans. There are also hybrid plans that pay an hourly base rate and then provide additional payment based on productivity.
So who cares? Well, these systems are becoming much more widespread because they are very popular with hospital administrators. They are perceived to push docs to move the meat resulting in faster turnover which equates to more billing for the hospital and improved patient satisfaction due to shorter ED length of stay. So you should care because if is increasingly more likely that you will one day work under a system like this.
What are some pros and cons? Well the good thing about getting a financial reward for higher productivity is that it motivates some good behaviors like not leaving a bunch of charts for the next doc and not signing out a ton of stuff that could be dispositioned. It also helps to know that when you are getting killed you will get something for it. It also tends to cause better documentation as productivity is based on documentation. Bad things about the system are that it can motivate bad behaviors like cherry picking charts to see more of whatever gets rewarded in your particular system eg. If you get paid based on money collected you will want to avoid seeing the uninsured. It can motivate docs to try to dispo patients too quickly and miss things. It can cause resentment among docs is someone is seen as being a chart hog.
I work under a hybrid system that pays a base hourly rate then rewards productivity to the tune of about 20% of your gross. It is a really good system because it means that if you have a slow shift you can still pay the mortgage but if you get killed you get something for it. It reduces the number of signouts and charts dont sit in the rack but people dont act like their lives depend on the productivity because its only 20%. We are paid based on billing, not collections, so there is no disincentive to see the uninsured. The cost of seeing the uninsured (about $150K per doc per year) is spread out across the whole group.
A note about how productivity is measured. The most common way to do it is using RVUs or Realtive Value Units. This is essentially a way to equalize the work done across different numbers and kinds of patients. For example if two docs saw 10 patients each but one saw 10 ankle sprains and the other saw 10 acute MIs the MI doc will get credited with a significantly higher number of RVUs than the ankle doc. Its a way of trying to compare apples to apples which is important if compensation is to be based on productivity.
These systems run the gamut from plans that give small rewards to docs with the highest productivity to plans where all payment is based on productivity. The plans where your total compensation is based on your productivity are called fee for service or eat what you kill plans. There are also hybrid plans that pay an hourly base rate and then provide additional payment based on productivity.
So who cares? Well, these systems are becoming much more widespread because they are very popular with hospital administrators. They are perceived to push docs to move the meat resulting in faster turnover which equates to more billing for the hospital and improved patient satisfaction due to shorter ED length of stay. So you should care because if is increasingly more likely that you will one day work under a system like this.
What are some pros and cons? Well the good thing about getting a financial reward for higher productivity is that it motivates some good behaviors like not leaving a bunch of charts for the next doc and not signing out a ton of stuff that could be dispositioned. It also helps to know that when you are getting killed you will get something for it. It also tends to cause better documentation as productivity is based on documentation. Bad things about the system are that it can motivate bad behaviors like cherry picking charts to see more of whatever gets rewarded in your particular system eg. If you get paid based on money collected you will want to avoid seeing the uninsured. It can motivate docs to try to dispo patients too quickly and miss things. It can cause resentment among docs is someone is seen as being a chart hog.
I work under a hybrid system that pays a base hourly rate then rewards productivity to the tune of about 20% of your gross. It is a really good system because it means that if you have a slow shift you can still pay the mortgage but if you get killed you get something for it. It reduces the number of signouts and charts dont sit in the rack but people dont act like their lives depend on the productivity because its only 20%. We are paid based on billing, not collections, so there is no disincentive to see the uninsured. The cost of seeing the uninsured (about $150K per doc per year) is spread out across the whole group.
A note about how productivity is measured. The most common way to do it is using RVUs or Realtive Value Units. This is essentially a way to equalize the work done across different numbers and kinds of patients. For example if two docs saw 10 patients each but one saw 10 ankle sprains and the other saw 10 acute MIs the MI doc will get credited with a significantly higher number of RVUs than the ankle doc. Its a way of trying to compare apples to apples which is important if compensation is to be based on productivity.