• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Return on investment: Are you staffing appropriately?

Hospitalist Leadership Connection, December 1, 2009

You’ve certainly heard the adage “You get what you pay for.” It reflects the commonly held notion that by investing wisely in a product or service, you should reap benefits equal to or greater than the initial investment. The converse is true as well. If we buy an inexpensive product or service, we are disappointed but not surprised when it fails. We might refer to this purchasing equation as a value proposition. The perfect balance to this proposition is to invest just enough to feel satisfied with what we receive. We are excited when we feel that the value of a purchase exceeds it price. It applies to everything we purchase in life, and it applies to hospitalist program staffing.

One question people often ask is, “Are we staffing appropriately?” Answering this question will help you determine whether your hospitalist program is properly staffed and your staff members are working hard enough. To be at fair market value, the hospital must agree that the hospitalists are working at industry standards. You will want to prove that you have the following:

• Proper staffing ratios of 15–18 patient encounters per full-time day hospitalist
• Expense containment
• Compensation systems that reward hospitalists for working hard and are externally competitive and internally consistent
• Productivity that achieves benchmark relative value units per full-time equivalent
• Recruitment and retention packages that are at fair market value

Compensation and productivity information can be provided by the following resources:

• American Medical Group Association
• Delta Medical Consulting
• Hay Group
• Hospitalist Management Resources, LLC
• Jackson and Harris
• Martin, Fletcher
• MD Network
• MGMA
• Merritt, Hawkins & Associates
• Pinnacle Health Group
• Sullivan, Cotter, and Associates
• Society of Hospital Medicine
• Warren Surveys

The above excerpt is adapted from The Hospitalist Program Management Guide, Second Edition, by Kenneth G. Simone, DO, and Jeffrey R. Dichter, MD, FACP, published by HCPro, Inc.

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive