Last week, Moody’s Investor Service reported that a contract dispute between UnitedHealth Group and physician staffing company TeamHealth could indirectly affect hospitals and other providers.
Our 2019 report highlights the growing significance of physician contracts as a major component of hospital spending, with particular growth in payment for hospital-based physician services such as hospitalists, intensivists and laborists.
Pediatric facilities understandably have a specific set of patients and, as a result, they have different physician contracting needs than most hospitals.
While these arrangements benefit patients, physicians and healthcare organizations, they are usually complex and require careful attention to payment and service requirements.
Many community healthcare organizations address this need by contracting with a children’s hospital or academic medical center. Several specialty physician companies also provide pediatric physician services.
Finding comprehensive benchmarks and market data can be a challenge because these contracts have many different components, from compensation method to treatment of technical fees to incentives.
Unlike the majority of call coverage, leadership, and medical direction contracts, hospital-based agreements often include incentive payments.
Let’s examine hospital-based service contracts and what components make up these sorts of agreements.
MD Ranger has seen a steady increase in incentive components in hospital-based contracts.
Some of the growth in physician expenditures appears to be the result of continued growth in the number and scale of hospital-based programs and services.
Though rates at the individual service level remain relatively stable year over year, overall physician costs paid by hospitals have skyrocketed in the last decade.
Hospital-based services often have more complicated contracts than other services.
MD Ranger collects hard-to-find information on hospital-based services like anesthesiology, pathology, radiology.
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