Physician recruitment data indicates relative value units, or RVUs, are still the dominant metric for production bonuses in 2018-19, according to Merritt Hawkins' "2019 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives."
The report is based on 3,131 physician and advanced practice practitioner search assignments conducted by Merritt Hawkins and related staffing companies between April 1, 2018, and March 31, 2019.
Based on the data, here are 12 benchmarks for physician recruitment:
- Most physicians (70 percent) were offered salary with bonus.
- Physicians offered salary plus production bonus were most commonly evaluated on RVUs (70 percent), followed by quality (56 percent), net collections (18 percent), patient encounters (9 percent) and gross billings (3 percent).
- Almost all (98 percent) of physicians were offered relocation allowance.
- The average relocation allowance for physicians was $10,393.
- Almost three-fourths (71 percent) were offered a signing bonus.
- The average signing bonus for physicians was $32,692.
- Ninety-eight percent of roles included an offer to pay continuing medical education.
- The average CME allowance offered was $3,620.
- Nearly all offers included health insurance, malpractice insurance, 401(k) or retirement contributions, and disability.
- Educational loan forgiveness was not as common — just 31 percent of offers included this benefit.
- Most loan forgiveness offerings (78 percent) exceed three years, based on 2017-18 data. The report did not include data for 2018-19.
- The average amount offered for educational loan forgiveness was $101,571.
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