Physicians within the U.S. are doing extra work than ever earlier than — however they’re getting paid much less.
This month, consulting agency Kaufman Corridor launched new analysis on work relative worth models, or wRVUs, for the nation’s physicians and superior observe suppliers. This metric tracks suppliers’ productiveness by measuring the quantity of scientific work carried out, resembling affected person visits, procedures and different billable providers, adjusted for complexity and time. Every go to or service has an related wRVU — and by including up all these values and dividing by the variety of full-time suppliers, healthcare organizations get a constant method to observe and evaluate how a lot scientific work their suppliers are doing.
Within the second quarter of 2025, that translated to six,449 wRVUs per doctor and 5,030 per advance observe supplier, which means productiveness is up 12% for physicians and 11% for superior observe suppliers in comparison with two years in the past.
Nonetheless, reimbursement charges aren’t rising on the similar tempo — doctor pay per affected person go to has dropped by 33% since 2001. And as extra sufferers start to lose insurance coverage protection within the months forward on account of the One Large Lovely Invoice Act, this fee hole will solely widen.
Consultants are calling for doctor fee reform, saying it’s the solely measure that can protect the sustainability of unbiased doctor practices and gradual the wave of consolidation.
Smaller, unbiased practices are likely to really feel the results of rising workloads and stagnant reimbursement most acutely. Not like massive hospital networks, they’ve fewer assets — which makes it more durable to rent satisfactory help employees, put money into effectivity know-how and set up different income streams.
Extra work, much less help
Though physicians’ workloads are getting bigger, their help employees ranges are declining, identified Matthew Bates, managing director and doctor enterprise service line chief at Kaufman Corridor.
Staffing ranges for help roles resembling entrance desk workers and medical assistants have dropped by 13% previously two years, he famous. This imbalance — 12% extra work with 13% much less help — is a significant driver of suppliers’ continued stress and burnout, Bates stated.
In his eyes, AI has not but offset burnout and staffing shortages. AI instruments, resembling ambient scribes, have primarily lowered suppliers’ after-hours charting, or their “pajama time,” as an alternative of decreasing their workload within the clinic, he stated.
Persistent care backlogs add to the strain on suppliers as nicely. Following the pandemic, many elective procedures had been delayed, creating monthslong waitlists that physicians should work to clear whereas nonetheless maintaining with new demand, Bates added.
“I’ve bought many consumers who’ve bought three, six or nine-month ready lists to get a screening colonoscopy. We’re working by means of that backlog — we postpone tons of of 1000’s of screening colonoscopies, and it’s going to take a very long time to get caught again up,” he said.
All of those pressures — heavier workloads, shrinking help groups and large affected person backlogs — have converged to gas right now’s burnout disaster.
To Bates, doctor burnout stems from systemic workload and staffing points. Discussions about burnout usually blame the EHR, however the core difficulty is that physicians are doing extra work with much less assist, he declared.
“If UPS went to their workers and stated, ‘I would like you to ship 10% extra packages over the subsequent two years than you’ve performed traditionally,’ that may be very tough for them to do, and the union would push again rightly,” Bates remarked.
Medicare’s failure to maintain up with inflation
Doctor pay per affected person go to is declining, whilst the price of working a observe — paying the lease, hiring employees members and medical provides — continues to climb, identified Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, president of the American Medical Affiliation.
“It prices extra to do the work, and we’re getting compensated much less to do the work, and there’s not sufficient of us. That’s only a whole recipe for worsening healthcare in our nation,” Dr. Mukkamala declared.
He believes fee reform is urgently wanted — and Medicare should be the primary goal.
Medicare units the baseline for reimbursement by means of its annual payment schedule. Personal payers nearly all the time peg their very own fee charges to Medicare’s schedule, usually paying a small share above or beneath it.
As a result of Medicare reimbursement charges have didn’t sustain with the tempo of inflation, all the system has adopted swimsuit, Dr. Mukkamala stated.
He additionally famous that tens of millions of People are anticipated to lose Medicaid protection because of the One Large Lovely Invoice Act. It will trigger sufferers to delay care till their situations worsen, rising reliance on emergency departments and including pressure to an already overburdened system, he defined.
With out reform, non-public practices are compelled to run on skeleton crews, Dr. Mukkamala added. This value chopping measure often ends in longer wait occasions, extra administrative burden falling on physicians and a larger threat of burnout.
For smaller or unbiased practices, the monetary squeeze can develop into so extreme that they shut down altogether or promote themselves to massive well being techniques.
The unsure way forward for unbiased practices
Declining Medicare reimbursement is a large menace to physicians’ potential to maintain their practices financially sustainable, stated Meade Monger, CEO of healthcare knowledge firm Omniscient Well being.
Omniscient launched a report this month exhibiting that conventional Medicare fee charges for outpatient procedures have decreased yearly since 2016, with a cumulative decline of 10%. That is even worse for Medicare Benefit, with physicians being paid an estimated 10-15% lower than what conventional Medicare pays them.
To manage, many physicians have begun to deal with extra commercially insured sufferers, which reduces care entry for Medicare beneficiaries, Monger famous.
Nonetheless, most physicians can not afford to wholly hand over on Medicare, he added.
“To make up for declining Medicare reimbursement charges and rising prices, suppliers have been compelled into deep cost-cutting measures that minimize into the bone of efficiency and high quality,” Monger remarked.
He stated that shrinking reimbursement charges coupled with rising prices will proceed to erode the normal unbiased observe mannequin.
There has already been substantial consolidation of unbiased practices into bigger techniques, Monger identified. As an illustration, greater than 60% of physicians owned their very own practices in 2012, and by 2022, that quantity had dropped beneath 46%.
Bigger techniques can do a greater job of negotiating higher reimbursement contracts and spreading fastened prices, making consolidation an more and more frequent path for physicians in search of monetary stability.
To guard the way forward for unbiased practices, the business wants “a complete overhaul” of the Medicare reimbursement course of, Monger said.
In his view, this effort ought to heart on boosting doctor reimbursements, implementing stricter requirements on Medicare Benefit plans for denials and immediate funds, and advancing different fee fashions.
“Whereas CMS and different stakeholders have begun to behave on these areas, progress must be accelerated,” Monger declared.
Until reforms are enacted, dwindling pay and mounting strain will solely speed up doctor burnout — driving extra suppliers to depart unbiased observe or the career altogether.
Picture: Xavier Lorenzo, Getty Pictures
