“It’s Academic: Managing Compensation in a Blended Physician Employment Model” – Rudd Kierstead, Principal

Rudd Kierstead, Principal, will be speaking with Martin Durkin, Senior Campus Counsel – Healthcare, SUNY Upstate Medical University and Benjamin Tudor, Executive Director, Compensation Yale New Haven Health, presenting “It’s Academic: Managing Compensation in a Blended Physician Employment Model”.

The rapid development of large integrated health networks to provide comprehensive care for populations results in health systems that provide primary to quaternary care.  These systems often include an academic medical center and their associated faculty practice plan as well as many “community physicians” that have transitioned from independent practice to an employment model or those that went directly from training to hospital employment.

As a result, community and academic physicians increasingly work in the same system. While in the past, it was easy to tell the difference between an academic physician and a community physician, roles are increasingly blurry, making managing compensation, job descriptions and expectations and roles ever more challenging.

This session will focus on the unique issues with provider compensation, contracting, and portfolio management within a hybrid system.  Specifically, we will include discussion of the following topics:

• Prevalent practice models and organizational structures within an academic health system;
• Institutional versus department oversight;
• Characteristics of a hybrid model;
• Contractual considerations when employing physicians in distinct organizational entities;
• What it means to be ‘academic’ versus ‘non-academic’ and how clinicians of both types interact in a hybrid model; and
• Physician compensation challenges in a hybrid environment
  • Historical versus current compensation variations between academic and community physicians
  • Developing compensation programs and policies in a hybrid environment,
  • Establishing expectations for physicians practicing in both academic and community settings.
  • What is an FTE? Defining minimum work standards in a hybrid environment.