Physician Payroll Question

We are exploring a potentially new way of paying our physicians. Currently, all physicians are paid bi-weekly based on standard hours and hourly pay rate. For physician groups paid on productivity, the bi-weekly payment is considered a ‘draw’ on their contract payment. In addition, supplementary manual checks are cut for a variety of reasons at various times during the month (including administrative time payments, incentive payments based on pre-defined clinical goals, and other payments required by contract). Bi-weekly checks are subject to direct deposit while our manual payments are ‘real’ checks. To complicate matters, check requests are sent through our system from various sources and may be held up waiting on appropriate approvals.

 

Physicians are often confused about what is being paid on manual checks since there is no way to note on the check stub the reason for the payment. Our Payroll staff must manually enter each payment request and then our HR staff must interpret complex physician contracts to determine the number of bi-weekly hours and pay rate.

 

Needless to say, this is all very time consuming and can be rather confusing for all parties involved. We are exploring the possibility of moving all physicians to a monthly payroll rather than bi-weekly. This payroll would include all miscellaneous check amounts plus their usual salary. This would allow us to roll all dollars into one monthly check, thus eliminating all the supplementary checks they are now receiving. In addition, we would require that all physicians transfer to this monthly payroll system with no exceptions.

 

I would like to hear if anyone else is participating in anything in like this and if so, how you set it up, pitfalls to be aware of, how it’s working for your organization, and any other advice you could give.

 

If you are not using this system, what, if anything, are you doing differently for your physicians and any other groups that may fall into the ‘special circumstances’ group? This is something we are still in the planning phase of and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks so much.

 

Cindy Hudson

cindy.hudson@centrahealth.com