A quick thought on physician compensation

As you may have noticed, there was no blog post this past Friday. This was due to the fact I was out of town all day conducting a compensation review engagement for a large cardiology group. As part of this type of engagement, I always interview all of the physician owners to get their input in to the likes and dislikes of the current compensation formulary.

I’ve conducted many of these interviews over the years and one thing has always been clear: When times are good, nobody complains………..as soon as practice incomes decline along with physician compensation, the “cracks” always begin. Physicians start complaining about their take home pay and guess where their angst lies……….directly with the compensation plan. As we all have experienced at one time or another, a lot of this resentment usually lies beneath the surface and then suddenly explodes.

So I suggest management makes sure it knows exactly how each physician owner feels about compensation and address the issues immediately. Usually the compensation plan doesn’t need to be changed at all……….the problem could be with management’s failure to make the hard decisions necessary to increase practice profits!!