Physicians are the heart and soul of any healthcare organization. As a hospital administrator, you must do all it takes to attract and retain the services of the top physicians. When all is said and done, it comes down to physician compensation. With a complex healthcare regulatory landscape, it’s a herculean task to determine academic physician compensation rightly. However, you can seek healthcare compensation valuation services to help you determine physician compensation in line with the fair market value.
You’ll enjoy the following services when you engage a healthcare compensation valuation company.
1. Physician Employment Agreement
To have a smooth working relationship with your physicians, you must agree on favorable terms and conditions on the onset. For efficient negotiations, you need an unbiased evaluation that will help you and the physician arrive at a fair market value. A third-party opinion is necessary, and this is where the services of a healthcare business valuation company come in handy. The healthcare evaluators analyze several factors when preparing a physician employment agreement. They include; the physician’s current and projected productivity rate, academic services such as publishing market surveys, and mid-level supervision.
Being an expert in healthcare valuation, the company will conduct the valuation guided by the Stark laws that guide healthcare FMV (Fair Market Value). As a result, you’ll have a legal-binding employment agreement with the physicians in your hospital. It’s important that you have amicable employment terms with your physician so you can both work more efficiently. Healthcare compensation valuations companies will also analyze other recruitment agreements such as relocation assistance and educational loan assistance.
2. Physician On-Call Coverage Agreements
By analyzing the services provided at your hospital and applying the Stark methodology, healthcare evaluators will determine what form of on-call arrangement is suitable for your healthcare facility. On-call agreements are mostly structured in two forms — unrestricted coverage and restricted coverage.
Under unrestricted coverage, physicians are not required to be physically present in your hospital, but they should be located within a short distance from your healthcare facility. With this type of coverage, hospitals mostly approach academic physician compensation on a per diem basis.
Restricted coverage requires a physician to be physically available at your hospital for the entire coverage period as agreed. Most hospital-based specialties usually take this form of on-call agreement. In both forms of coverage, healthcare fair market valuation principles are applied.
3. Professional Service Agreements
As a hospital administrator, it’s your duty to liaise with physician groups or independent physicians to provide services not offered in your hospital. These arrangements allow the physicians to keep their independence and exempts your hospital from any liability. As such, your hospital and the physician groups have more flexibility. When analyzing the academic physician compensation, healthcare evaluators consider several factors. These include specific service valuations, physician payment on a per study basis, and telemedicine coverage. By utilizing healthcare compensation valuation services, you’ll get fair terms from the physician groups you engage.
4. Medical Director Arrangements
Medical director compensation is comprehensively guided by Stark Phase III regulations that differentiate between the administrative and clinical work done by a physician. Healthcare business evaluation services help you determine the duties of an administrative physician and the appropriate fair market value compensation. This eliminates the overlap of duties and, as a result, prevents compensation stacking. Healthcare evaluators help you strike a good-balance when determining the administrative work of a physician and the resulting compensation.
As a hospital administrator, you must ensure that all your physicians are compensated according to the fair market value and the Stark law regulations. When you have good working arrangements with your physicians such as academic physician compensation, your hospital will have excellent patient service. This is crucial as more Americans are seeking healthcare services. As a percentage of America’s GDP, healthcare had increased from 5% in 1960 to 18.2% in 2018. To provide quality healthcare services, you must first take care of your physicians by ensuring that they’re fairly compensated for their services.