Physician compensation stable during pandemic
Physician compensation during the COVID-19 pandemic remained largely unchanged, even as just about everything else across the healthcare landscape shifted, a new report shows.
The Medical Group Management Association's 2021 MGMA Provider Compensation and Production report examined data from more than 185,000 providers across more than 6,700 physician- and hospital-owned care venues and found that primary care physician compensation saw modest growth in 2020, and other physician specialties saw slight increases or met previous year compensation amid the pandemic.
That relative stability occurred despite patient volumes falling off a cliff, caps in elective and nonemergency procedures, and the shuttering of thousands of physician practices.
"MGMA's modest compensation findings belie the turmoil of 2020," said Halee Fischer-Wright, MD, president and CEO of Englewood, Colorado-based MGMA. "Our numbers tell a story of a year of unprecedented challenges that could have potentially led to a serious decline in compensation across every category we track."
According to MGMA, total compensation for primary care physicians rose by 2.6% between 2019 and 2020, compared to the three- and five-year cumulative increases of 5.27% and 10.15% respectively.
Other physician specialties also held stable, and decreases in compensation for some specialists were not as bad as anticipated, despite patient access challenges during the pandemic.
"Surgical physicians, for example, whose patient volumes were significantly limited because of regional lockdowns and overwhelmed hospitals, experienced a compensation decrease of 0.89% in 2020," MGMA said. "Nonsurgical specialists also reported a decrease of 1.29% despite the significant challenges faced by those specialists last year."
Advanced practice providers also saw a slight bump in compensation in 2020.
Federal government subsidies, most notably the Paycheck Protection Program and the Provider Relief Act, were credited with stabilizing many medical practices in 2020, and a rebound in patient volumes at the end of the year also helped to contend with the pandemic's fallout.
Fisher-Wright said the quick action by physicians to recognize the threat posed by the pandemic also helped soften the blow.
"Practices acted quickly to leverage government programs to cover staff costs and expenses during the early part of the 2020," she said. "They adapted to new delivery models such as telemedicine and were able to quickly ramp up when patient volumes returned later in the year. It is a testament to the resiliency of physician groups that weathering the challenges of a year that tested us all in so many ways."
Source: HealthLeaders