‘Golden Rule’ for designing your physician pay plan

Traditionally, physician compensation formulas attempted to reflect a balance between overall group strength and individual responsibility. So most plans included both productivity pay and equal pay. But life in today's group practice has grown more complicated.

Larger and more sophisticated groups demand more from individual members than simply seeing patients and performing procedures. They recognize compensable value in leadership and participation in group governance. Managed care—particularly risk-sharing and pre-paid plans—has introduced terms like "utilization," "quality," and "patient satisfaction" into the mix.

But at the end of the day, you still have the same basic issue driving your group's quest for finding what's fair: group strength versus individual contribution.