PA Productivity

Measuring productivity in healthcare is important to assess contribution to care, revenue generation, and job performance but accurate measurement can be challenging. Variations in practice settings, patient complexity, acuity of care, and healthcare resources affect a healthcare provider’s work and productivity. In addition, productivity can be misvalued for PAs when measured by work product or financial contribution. Lack of attribution, as may occur when PAs are not recognized as the provider of services or when contributing to bundled payments, may devalue a PAs “productivity.”

In instances of “incident to” billing in which a PA’s professional services are billed under a physician, measurement of PA value and productivity is flawed and undervalued. A similar problem occurs for services in a hospital setting that are personally performed by a PA, with a physician performing a percentage of the service, but billed under the physician as a “split shared visit.”

Because productivity can also be measured as the effectiveness of productive effort, contributions other than revenue or volume often provide a more accurate assessment of value. Measures of gross billing, net revenue, patient volume, and relative value units (RVUs) may not account for a PA’s overall contribution. Considering factors such as contribution to practice efficiency, patient satisfaction, and quality and outcome measures may better assess a PA’s value to a practice.

Become familiar with the considerations and challenges associated with calculating PA productivity and financial contribution to the practice and learn about ways to measure PA value.