Physicians continue to be the major drivers of hospital revenue, and according to a new survey by physician search firm Merritt Hawkins.
“The value of physician care is not only related to the quality of patient outcomes,” Travis Singleton, the company’s executive vice president, said in a written statement. “Physicians continue to drive the financial health and viability of hospitals, even in a health care system that is evolving towards value-based payments.”
Family physicians generated an average of $2.11 million for their affiliated hospitals last year, which was up by 41% over 2015 (the survey is conducted every 3 years) and even managed to top the previous FP high of $2.07 million in 2012, Merritt Hawkins reported.
Primary care physicians as a group averaged just over $2.13 million in revenue in 2018, compared with almost $2.45 million for specialists, which “suggests that emerging value-based delivery models have yet to inhibit the revenue generating power of physician specialists,” the report said. The average revenue for physicians in all 19 specialties in the survey was almost $2.38 million, an increase of 52% since Merritt Hawkins’ last survey.
The current survey was conducted from October to December 2018 and is based on responses from 62 chief financial officers or other financial managers who represented 93 hospitals. Responses from smaller hospitals (0-99 beds) were “somewhat overrepresented in the survey” relative to their number nationwide, Merritt Hawkins said.