For Clinicians and Clinicians-to-Be
Financial compensation is not how much you’re paid, it’s how much you’re paid divided by the effort required to earn it.
Your organization uses a combination of local market conditions and the annual salary survey from the American Medical Group Association (AMGA) to establish salary ranges.
They claim that using the survey protects your organization from accusations that it’s paying you extra money for your services in exchange for referrals back to the organization itself.
MACRA/MIPS is designed to push down overall payments by Federal Government to healthcare providers—reductions that will be reflected in the annual survey.
Once MACRA/MIPS kicks in, either:
You will be paid less because your organization generates less revenue.
OR
You will be paid less because your organization can use the AMGA survey to push down your salary.
You will CERTAINLY be required to do more data entry per patient, while still being required to see the same number of patients.
With your pay decreasing and the effort to realize that pay increasing, you’ll feel like your compensation is in free fall.
Your tactic?
Find a situation where MACRA/MIPS won’t affect your compensation—one which relies heavily on direct payments from patients or true value-based programs such as Medicare Advantage. That decreases the need for organizations to rely on the AMGA survey or “community standards” to set your pay.
Or set up your own practice with the same principals.
Either way, you can earn based on the value you generate.
If you don’t, you will absolutely find yourself being paid less while spending more time working and performing non-clinical tasks.
This is not a prediction, this is a certainty.
And the next year will be your last chance to make changes before you really feel the loss. Before you really begin to lose joy time.
Don’t end up watching your last chance float away. Don’t overlook what Molly Brown knew . . .
The time to get in the lifeboat is before it’s apparent the ship is sinking.
That’s why she survived and transcended her experience on the Titanic.
That’s how you’ll transcend your professional challenges too.
Need unbiased guidance finding your ideal medical practice or making your current position even better, contact me, no obligation just help and value.