Physician productivity continues to rise as doctors see heavier workloads in part due to a shortage of medical care providers and an influx of patients following the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The latest evidence of this trend is a report from Vizient’s KaufmanHall consulting firm that shows net patient revenue per provider rose 4% to $404,116 in the second quarter of this year compared to $389,040 in the same period a year ago. Meanwhile, per-physician work relative value units (wRVUs), a key measure of physician productivity, rose 6% in the second quarter compared to the year-ago period.
“Physician productivity rose,” the KaufmannHall report shows. “Corresponding increases in revenue and expenses indicate that physicians are working more.”
The report comes amid an intensifying shortage of physicians seeing more and more patients whose healthcare needs are greater. Part of this is related to demographics as baby boomers age but the main driver of compensation and related productivity is physicians are simply busier and there aren’t enough of them.
The Association of American Medical Colleges says the United States will face a physician shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036, according to a report the group released last year though a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators is pushing legislation to lift a cap on Medicare funding for residencies. Similar legislation has been proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The KaufmanHall report, which is based on data from more than 200,000 employed physicians and advanced practice providers in more than 100 specialties, follows similar reports earlier this year on physician compensation and productivity.
The American Medical Group Association (AMGA) 2025 Medical Group Compensation and Productivity Survey, which showed a 4.9% compensation increase across its entire dataset, said work relative value units (wRVUs) increased 1.5% overall and that often correlates to increase in patient visits, which grew by 2.3%.
“We are at this tipping point,” AMGA Consulting’s chief operating officer Mike Coppola said in an interview earlier this year. “You cannot keep driving compensation increases through productivity. Volume is being driven on the backs of physicians and that is hard to sustain.”
