Midwest Rural Hospital Compensation Survey

The last few years have been replete with disruption for Midwest rural hospitals and provider compensation overall. Health care has survived the pandemic, pent-up demand, staffing challenges, a rise in the use in telehealth, changes in E&M code wRVU weights, heightened physician burnout and strong M&A activity. The last few years have been volatile for health care, but we persist.

Last year’s survey showed that for Midwest rural hospitals, median provider compensation increased a steady three percent across all specialties in 2021 compared to 2020. However, median productivity, in terms of work relative value units (wRVUs), increased sharply in 2021, nearly 30% on average across all specialties compared to 2020 and nearly 10% compared to 2019. This likely reflects bounce back from the pandemic as well as increased weighting of E&M codes. A major question in this year’s survey is whether provider production will continue with strong gains or stabilize in 2022.

Rural hospitals continue to pay high prices to recruit and retain providers. Compounding this issue is the scarcity of provider compensation market data in the rural setting. This gap can lead to lower recruitment yields, retention issues and inaccuracies in fair market value/commercial reasonability analysis.

The Faegre Drinker Midwest Rural Hospital Compensation Survey helps to bridge this gap. By participating in our survey, you can help us gather the data needed to create fact-based strategies that address provider recruitment and retention issues in the rural setting.

Participants in the survey will receive the results for free.

The survey requests data on the topics below. (Please provide as much information as you can but note that we need at least some physician level compensation data to accept the submission.):

• Hospital demographics
• Provider retention data, including turnover percent and days to fill
• Provider benefits data, including FTEs for full-time benefits, retirement match, CME and PTO days
• Physician compensation, including salary vs. incentive compensation, administrative and medical directorship pay, and call coverage pay
• Compensation for advanced practice providers, including nurse practitioners, physician assistants and certified nurse anesthetists
• Provider productivity as measured by visits, work relative value units, collections and clinical hours
• NEW THIS YEAR: C-Suite Executive Compensation and Benefits

To participate, simply download the survey template by clicking on the button below, follow the instructions within the survey template, and email your completed response to Aaron Dobosenski at aaron.dobosenski@faegredrinker.com. (If you require a secured file-sharing site for submitting your data, please contact Aaron.) Deadline for submissions is March 24, 2023.