Work ethic contributes to clinic’s profitability
Work ethic contributes to clinic’s profitability
Compensation based partly on productivity
The Hedges Clinic in Frankfort, IL, encourages its physicians to work as hard as they can and as smart as they can, says Frank Schibli, practice administrator. "Our physicians have a strong work ethic. They enjoy practicing medicine and are willing to go that extra mile," Schibli adds.
Doctors are paid a salary and a quarterly bonus based on a formula that results in more pay for more productivity. Here’s how the formula works:
- 45% split evenly;
- 45% based on production, or the dollar volume the physician generates;
- 10% based on patient count, to encourage them to see more patients.
The patient count part of the formula is designed to compensate physicians such as pediatricians, who have to see more patients to produce the same dollar volume a surgeon produces with one procedure. "The compensation is equally unfair because there is never anything that is fair. We try to keep it as equally unfair as possible," Schibli says.
Each physician receives a monthly report that includes data on how many patients every doctor saw, how much money each produced, what the ancillaries were, how many capitated patients the practice saw, and a comparison of the year-to-date patient count with previous years.
"Since the information is shared among all physicians, there may be some peer pressure for physicians who see fewer patients than the norm. If it’s a partner who notices that a physician isn’t as productive as his peers, it carries more weight than if an administrator points it out," Schibli says.
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