How many RVUs is a lot/average?

[FiveCharecters]

So I work in a private practice for a surgery subspecialty. We get monthly reports on how many RVU's we have made but I have no reference point for this piece of data. Will be up for a contract renewal later this year and I am curious if there is an online list somewhere that lists how many rvu is average for each specialty? i tried googling extensively but couldnt find anything other than for physicians. I think last year I had like 6,500 rvus. Thoughts?

[SedRate]

There's variability within specialities -- some PAs operate a ton and do lots of procedures, some do mostly H&Ps and global work -- so to find an average might be difficult.

Ask them to explain how your RVUs are being calculated. I'm no coding expert, but you must do a ton of procedures and operating to have 6500 RVUs as a surgical PA. I'm guessing, though, that those RVUs are based on the surgeon's billables and not your assist modifier/portion which is something like 14%. So a surgery worth 22 RVUs to the surgeon is really only worth 3 RVUs as an assist. 

 

[Boatswain2PA]

23 hours ago, FiveCharecters said:

So I work in a private practice for a surgery subspecialty. We get monthly reports on how many RVU's we have made but I have no reference point for this piece of data. Will be up for a contract renewal later this year and I am curious if there is an online list somewhere that lists how many rvu is average for each specialty? i tried googling extensively but couldnt find anything other than for physicians. I think last year I had like 6,500 rvus. Thoughts?

I think this would be hard to find.  Corporate beancounters seem to use every method they can find to obfuscate how much they make off of us (and Docs).

Here an example:

I worked for *small corporate group* for years and was paid hourly, with a RVU bonus that was capped at $xx/hr for 5.5 RVU/hr.  I always far exceeded that RVU/hour (historical average was 7.2 RVU/r), but with that cap couldn't make any more than $xx/hr.

Unfortunately got bought out by *huge corporate group that sucks* but they promised that us there wasn't a "cap" on the RVU/hour.  Okay, sounds great!

After switching billing to the new *huge corporate group that sucks* beancounters, there was a 3 month period where they kept us at our average historical pay ($xx/hr), meanwhile they were determining a new average RVU/hr measure.  During that 3 months I worked my a$$ off, seeing as many patients as possible and doing everything I could do to increase my RVU/hr (even things like not clocking out late when I stayed late, because I didn't want to dilute the RVU/hr).   Furthermore, this was well after the covid-lag, and was when the EDs were getting crushed again.

I was expecting to get 8-9RVU/hour, and 20-25% increase in pay.

Nope.  Somehow *huge corporate group that sucks* says I only earned 4.2 RVU/hour during those 3 months, and didn't qualify for an RVU bonus at all.  Instead of a 20-25% pay raise, **giant corporate group that sucks** cut my pay by 20%.

That's when I knew the system was rigged. 

When I work there now, I will take care of patients, and I will take care of the ED team, but IDGAF about RVU/hour and billing at that site.

[SedRate]

59 minutes ago, Boatswain2PA said:

I think this would be hard to find.  Corporate beancounters seem to use every method they can find to obfuscate how much they make off of us (and Docs).

Here an example:

I worked for *small corporate group* for years and was paid hourly, with a RVU bonus that was capped at $xx/hr for 5.5 RVU/hr.  I always far exceeded that RVU/hour (historical average was 7.2 RVU/r), but with that cap couldn't make any more than $xx/hr.

Unfortunately got bought out by *huge corporate group that sucks* but they promised that us there wasn't a "cap" on the RVU/hour.  Okay, sounds great!

After switching billing to the new *huge corporate group that sucks* beancounters, there was a 3 month period where they kept us at our average historical pay ($xx/hr), meanwhile they were determining a new average RVU/hr measure.  During that 3 months I worked my a$$ off, seeing as many patients as possible and doing everything I could do to increase my RVU/hr (even things like not clocking out late when I stayed late, because I didn't want to dilute the RVU/hr).   Furthermore, this was well after the covid-lag, and was when the EDs were getting crushed again.

I was expecting to get 8-9RVU/hour, and 20-25% increase in pay.

Nope.  Somehow *huge corporate group that sucks* says I only earned 4.2 RVU/hour during those 3 months, and didn't qualify for an RVU bonus at all.  Instead of a 20-25% pay raise, **giant corporate group that sucks** cut my pay by 20%.

That's when I knew the system was rigged. 

When I work there now, I will take care of patients, and I will take care of the ED team, but IDGAF about RVU/hour and billing at that site.

Ugh, lame. I hate corporate medicine. 

[AbeTheBabe]

On 2/8/2023 at 7:02 PM, Boatswain2PA said:

Nope.  Somehow *huge corporate group that sucks* says I only earned 4.2 RVU/hour during those 3 months, and didn't qualify for an RVU bonus at all.  Instead of a 20-25% pay raise, **giant corporate group that sucks** cut my pay by 20%.

Is there maybe a discrepancy between the RVU and the wRVU? This is a big thing for us in surgical specialties because some things don't get paid like a post-op doesn't count as wRVU.

 

I think the last private practice I worked for got like 90 bucks per wRVU for the docs and 70 bucks per wRVU for the PAs.

[Boatswain2PA]

3 hours ago, AbeTheBabe said:

Is there maybe a discrepancy between the RVU and the wRVU? This is a big thing for us in surgical specialties because some things don't get paid like a post-op doesn't count as wRVU.

 

I think the last private practice I worked for got like 90 bucks per wRVU for the docs and 70 bucks per wRVU for the PAs.

I would assume that "small corporate group" and "huge corporate group that sucks" would use the same metric (RVU or wRVU). 

Or, "small corporate group" used RVU, and new "huge corporate group that sucks" uses wRVU without telling us and they keep the difference (gotta pay the $400K salary for their three new Regional Vice President of Corporate Diversity, Exclusion and Ineptitude.