June 2020 Adjusting wRVUs for Physician Comp

This BIG idea is based on projects I’m working on this week and the past couple of weeks.  Practices often use work RVUs as part of their physician compensation calculation because work RVUs factor into the way payers pay practices.  Rather than simply living with the work RVU calculation, some practices are adjusting work RVUs to more closely mirror the adjustments payers make for things like modifiers and multiple procedure discounts.  Without making the calculation overly complicated, consider ways to adjust your wRVU formulas for modifiers.  For example, a surgical practice I’m working on this week wants to promote surgical assists in the operating room, so they are changing their modifier calculation to reward assisting surgeons in the OR.  Other groups may tweak multiple procedure rules to add incentives for certain procedures or physicians, in spite of payer rules.  Again, without getting too complex, consider how you might make your physician compensation more accurate or more useful by tweaking your formula like payers do.  While possible in Excel, these formulas are especially suited to data warehouses in SQL Server.  I hope your practice is getting back to normal in these crazy times.