As a medical student, I am a bit confused regarding compensation models for primary care. Is the most common scenario to get a guaranteed base salary if you hit a certain number of RVUs per year and then if you go above it then you get paid based on productivity? Is it common to find jobs that are entirely productivity based? From reading other articles and threads it seems like you can make a great salary in family medicine by learning to bill appropriately but if only a small portion of your salary is based on productivity then I don’t see how that would make a huge change in your overall income.
Depends on the system of payment where you end up working. More experienced folks can feel free to correct me at any time.
1. Salary only
- Every doctor with __ years experience in ___ specialty makes the same regardless of their patient numbers. Mayo clinic for example just started doing this in 2018. Some FM docs liked it, some FM docs hated it. It's gaining popularity now that FM is primarily employed rather than private practice.
2. Productivity only
- Based on your patient and RVUs numbers aka "keep what you catch." From my limited experience, this tends to be the established and more common version, but that may change with increasingly employed FM careers. This is how you hear about really efficient, organized FM docs making high wages.
3. New doctors
- Usually start out on guaranteed salary of $2___,000 for __ years before they've likely built up an adequate pt panel, at which point they transition to productivity. Watch out for contracts with shops that offer a tasty starting guaranteed salary but then drop your income when you switch over to productivity.
4. Direct primary care
- Private practice where each of your patients pays like $25 to $100 monthly for a guaranteed list of services and medications, no insurance involved. Still a minority of all systems and things are even cloudier with COVID throwing patient numbers in the air, but growing in popularity due to lack of insurance bull****.
