Median radiologist compensation climbed nearly 5.3% year over year, a sharper incline than such physicians’ gains in productivity, according to recently released data.
All told, non-interventional rad pay landed at $509,447 in 2019, compared to $482,599 the previous year. Meanwhile, radiologists’ productivity also ticked upward to 10,200 work relative value units during the same period, a nearly 4% increase, the American Medical Group Association’s consulting arm noted. The survey incorporated some 1,900 radiologist responses and 73 practices.
The differences between pay increases and productivity trends were more pronounced across the entire physician population in the survey, AMGA said. Overall physician compensation swung upward nearly 3.8% during the study period versus a 0.56% gain in productivity.
“We have now seen this same trend of divergent key metrics for several years in a row, and we have to wonder how long it can continue, given that the vast majority of revenue is still, by and large, generated via work RVU productivity,” AMGA Consulting President Fred Horton said in a Sept. 2 statement. “AMGA’s members are concerned about this ongoing trend, and we suspect the industry-wide response to COVID-19 will speed up efforts to mitigate this pattern.
This is the 33rd edition of the firm’s Medical Group Compensation and Productivity Survey, which included 127,000 providers across 317 medical groups. It also covers 169 different physician and advanced practice clinician specialties such as pediatric, interventional and neuro-interventional radiology. Those three tallied a median compensation of $445,642, $587,746 and $531,056, respectively, the AMGA reported. You can find more details about purchasing the report here.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.