It’s a question that many radiology groups have grappled with: Should we share individual physicians’ productivity metrics with others in the organization?
Two members of the specialty attempted to answer this query, sharing dueling opinion pieces Wednesday in the American Journal of Roentgenology. Jonathan R. Medverd, MD, argues in favor of this practice, believing that transparency among group members is necessary to “optimize long-term practice success.”
“The real issue is not the metric(s) but rather the environment of their application. When obscured, metrics can feed a culture of individualism and effort only on a contractual basis,” Medverd, with the Department of Radiology at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, wrote Sept. 13 [1]. “Transparency does not guarantee superior outcomes but does open the opportunity to inform and foster individual and group giving behaviors. When appropriately crafted and openly shared within a clearly articulated framework of an organization’s challenges, values, and goals, performance metrics can catalyze collaborative workforce engagement and motivation to navigate towards practice success and workplace satisfaction.”
Ronnie Sebro, MD, PhD, took the counterpoint, emphasizing that relative value units are a tool for calculating physician payment.
“RVUs are excellent for standardizing reimbursement between physicians and for ensuring that Medicare and Medicaid claims are reimbursed; however, wRVUs do not adequately capture physician effort or work complexity,” Sebro, with the Department of Radiology, Biostatistics, and Orthopedic Surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, wrote Sept. 13 [2]. “wRVUs have no association with the quality of patient care provided, and sharing of wRVUs as a metric of physician productivity incentivizes high-volume, low-quality work. Time-based metrics also have significant limitations and should not be shared among radiologists. Composite metrics that concurrently focus on multiple key performance indicators will likely be more useful.”
Read both pieces in AJR at the links below.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.