Primary care physicians are working harder for more pay as their compensation eclipses $300,000 as ... [+]
Physicians are working harder for more pay as patients return for care like doctor practices haven’t seen since before the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020.
A new report by the American Medical Group Association (AMGA) shows median primary care physician compensation eclipsed $300,000 for the first time for such doctors that included family practice, internal medicine and general pediatrics specialties. Meanwhile, the pay increases for medical and surgical specialties grew even faster than primary care.
The AMGA report reflects increased productivity of physicians in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which included office shutdowns in 2020 while the virus and related fears kept patients from seeing their physicians regularly through 2022 and into 2023. President Biden ended the U.S. public health emergency in May of last year.
Though primary care physicians are increasingly important as the frontline provider seen the most by patients, the end of the pandemic-era flat to falling compensation increases did even more for specialists. AMGA reports compensation increased “3.6% for primary care specialties, 5.1% for medical specialties, 5.5% for surgical specialties, and 5.8% for radiology, anesthesiology and pathology specialties in 2023.”
“We are seeing significant productivity increases, which, in essence, drove the compensation increases across specialties,” said Fred Horton, president, AMGA Consulting, which administers the survey.
As a sign of the shift away from pandemic-era care, telehealth visits that reached an unprecedented level are down while pent up demand for care is boosting physician productivity in practices across the country, MGMA compensation analysts say. “Telehealth visits are declining and more people are seeking care in physician offices again,” AMGA Consulting Chief Operating Officer Mike Coppola said in an interview.
Coppola and Horton say health systems and other organizations are working with younger physicians to meet their scheduling needs.
“Younger physicians are producing at higher rates than they were in the past,” Horton said in an interview. “Organizations have figured out to be more flexible in their scheduling of patients.”
AMGA data, which contains data from 459 medical groups, representing over 189,000 providers, shows visits to physician practices are up 3% overall from the group’s 2023 survey to this year’s report.
“Prior to Covid, productivity was largely flat,” the AMGA report says. “From survey year 2017-2020 (2016-2019 annual data), productivity changed on average 0.2% each year for all specialties. Removing the Covid years (2021 and 2022), the 2023 survey showed an increase of almost 3% while this year there was an overall increase of 5% in productivity.”
Primary care visits per physician, for example, were up 1.9% on average to 3,340 this year compared to 3,278 in the year earlier.
“We are seeing an increase in patient visits from last year to the current year,” the AMGA compensation analysis shows. “Patient visits in primary care, which serve as a litmus test for engagement of the overall patient population, increased 1.9% at median.”
