Data suggests technology investment has enabled providers to be more productive; physician-owned practices edge out hospital-owned practices by measure of wRVUs
by Intelliworx
Physicians have become increasingly more productive over the last decade or so. That’s according to the 2024 Provider Compensation Data Report by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).
That finding was included in a report published last year, which reflects data from more than 211,000 physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs). APPs include nurse practitioners and physician assistants. It covers data through the year ending 2023 and is the most recent the association has currently available publicly.
MGMA came to that conclusion by analyzing what the medical community refers to as “Work Relative Value Units” (wRVU). The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) says wRVUs reflect a “physician’s work, including mental effort, decision making, technical skills, physical effort, stress related to patient risk, and amount of time spent” on a given task.
In the report, MGMA says:
“In hospital-owned practices, median wRVUs were up in 2023 for APPs, primary care and surgical specialty physicians, with nonsurgical specialist productivity only slightly lower than 2022 levels.”
Here’s the data for hospital-owned practices:
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Interestingly, many providers that work for physician-owned practices, as opposed to hospital-owned practices saw even greater productivity gains:
“…primary care, surgical specialties and nonsurgical specialties in physician-owned practices reported higher median work RVUs (wRVUs) in 2023 versus 2022, and APP wRVU levels in private practices were largely unchanged from the previous year.”
The delta between wRVUs for primary care physicians in physician-owned practices versus hospital-owned practices in 2023 was 549 wRVUs. The same comparison for APPs was nearly double that number – and triple for surgical specialists and non-surgical specialists.
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Provider burnout remains a concern, so how are providers boosting productivity?
The Association attributes these productivity gains to healthcare’s investment in technology:
“Faced with years of hiring difficulties in a tight labor market, MGMA members largely report that they see [the] use of new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), as something that will become an essential skill to successfully lead healthcare provider organizations.”
Among the initiatives healthcare is investing in include technologies that do the following:
- Streamlining and automating administrative tasks, like appointment setting, record-keeping and provider recruitment and retention;
- Automating repetitive or rote tasks that free up providers to focus on higher-value action items; and
- Mapping out business processes to identify bottlenecks and redesigning workflows so the process runs more smoothly.
“As financial pressures increase, practice leaders are finding that their practices need to see more patients without adding physicians, advanced practitioners, or staff,” said Katie Lawrence, MHA, CMPE of Willow Strategy Group in the report. “When we ask people to do more with less, burnout can become a significant risk.”
She suggests reviewing how work is done and focusing efforts on process improvement. She has one important caveat that often gets lost at the leadership level: including your staff in your efforts to streamline operations.
“When people are included, they are more likely to accept the changes and they often feel more engaged with their work as a whole because they feel valued,” she said.
The full report is “Provider Pay and the Dawn of a New Era of Productivity” is freely available for download with registration on the MGMA website.
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Image credits: Cited report by MGMA
