BURLINGAME, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MD Ranger, Inc. has issued its second annual Physician Contract Benchmarks Report, providing comprehensive compensation benchmarks and scope of service data for on-call coverage, medical direction, administrative, leadership, and hospital-based physician services to help subscribers evaluate and document market rates for contract negotiation. The report contains data from more than 230 hospitals nationwide across 70 physician specialty areas.
Results indicate that a hospital’s trauma status and size are the biggest factors affecting payment rates. Across all services, trauma hospitals pay physicians 26 percent more than non-trauma hospitals for call coverage services, with trauma surgery remaining the highest paid call coverage specialty at $2,379 per diem. Medical directors at designated trauma centers were also paid more than their counterparts at non-trauma hospitals.
This is the first year for MD Ranger’s Hospital-Based Services Report, which contains benchmarks and contract terms for more than 300 contracts covering anesthesia, intensivist, hospitalist, emergency, neonatology, pathology, radiology, pediatric hospitalists and radiation oncology services. Contracts are common among traditional hospital-based specialties, with specialty groups contracting for the right to be exclusive onsite providers in exchange for guaranteed coverage and oversight. MD Ranger provides the only benchmarking report available detailing service and compensation data for these comprehensive, often exclusive hospital-based contracts.
Penny Stroud, CEO of MD Ranger said, “MD Ranger’s reports offer a comprehensive toolkit for healthcare providers to use in understanding market rates, documenting fair market value ranges and informing contract negotiations. Our new hospital-based reports provide exclusive details on incentive compensation, payment types, scope of services and global payments. In addition, the increasing scope of our call and direction services data illustrates the growth in services that hospitals are paying physicians to provide.”
Significant findings from the 2010/2011 Physician Contract Benchmarks Report include the following:
Hospital-based Physician Services:
- There is significantly more variability in the range and types of payments made for hospital-based services. Twenty-four percent of hospital-based contracts were unpaid, and only 24 percent included payments for unsponsored care. Twenty-one percent of contracts only pay medical directorship fees, and another 34 percent only pay for coverage services.
- The highest paid specialty is anesthesia, with a median annual payment of $773,309. The lowest paid service, radiation oncology, is frequently unpaid. When it is paid, the median annual payment is $40,566.
- Seven percent of all contracts contain an incentive component. Anesthesia and hospitalist contracts are most likely to have an incentive component, with the average incentive representing 24 percent of the base contract amount.
Call Coverage:
- Regional location of a hospital had no effect on the rates paid for call coverage.
- Hospitals paid the highest rates for on-call coverage for trauma surgery, at a median rate of $2,379 per day, and lowest for psychiatry, at $161 per day.
- Trauma status has the strongest correlation to on-call payment rates. Across all services, trauma status meant an average 26 percent premium to coverage rates, a trend mirrored in California state data that shows non-trauma hospital physician costs increased at a faster rate than trauma hospital costs between 2008 and 2009.
- Multi-campus arrangements reduced the average payment per campus by an average of 55 percent.
Medical Direction:
- Medical directors are most commonly paid in hourly rates, with hospitals paying more for surgical specialties, at a median rate of $177 per hour, than for either medical specialties ($145 per hour) or hospital-based ($150 per hour) specialties.
- Subscriber payments overall increased 2.3 percent over contracts for the same services in 2009.
- The number of hours required for direction services ranged from a median of 90 hours per year for home health to 480 hours for pathology/clinical laboratory.
- Trauma status was not a significant factor in medical direction, leadership and administrative rates.
MD Ranger’s proprietary database is one of the most robust and reliable in the industry, representing subscriber and proprietary data from more than 5,500 contracts and 230 hospitals in 17 states. MD Ranger’s reports allow subscribing hospitals to reduce costly outside consulting fees, negotiate competitive payment rates and simplify the internal contract approval process.
About MD Ranger
MD Ranger is a leading resource for physician contract benchmarks, scope of service data, and other tools to help hospitals, physicians, and health systems determine appropriate compensation rates, negotiate competitive contracts, and comply with federal regulations. The company provides subscribing organizations with a comprehensive toolkit and coaching to facilitate contractual relationships and compliance. For more information about becoming a subscriber, visit www.mdranger.com.