Physician access to real-time pay data linked to productivity gains, new analysis finds

Physicians who regularly checked their production and earnings data through a compensation software platform showed greater productivity gains than those who rarely looked at it, according to a white paper published in February by Simpliphy, a physician compensation software company.

The observational analysis, "Physician Engagement & Productivity," examined 1,258 providers across eight health system clients whose first login to the Simpliphy Desktop or Mobile App occurred between September 2022 and March 2025. Researchers compared 100 days of productivity data before each provider's first login with 100 days after, using work relative value units, or wRVUs, to standardize measurements across different fee schedules and organizational configurations.

Providers were required to have 200 total productive working days in the analysis window and a production-based compensation model. To limit the influence of extreme cases, the top and bottom 10% of providers by percentage change in productivity were excluded, and no randomized control group was used; providers served as their own pre- and post-engagement comparison.

Engagement was measured by how many times a provider viewed production and earnings screens in the 100 days following first login. Providers were grouped into three tiers: minimal engagement, 0 to 21 views, which served as the baseline; engaged lower-depth, 22 to 71 views; and engaged higher-depth, 72 or more views.

Providers in the lower-depth group posted an average incremental increase of about 0.41 daily wRVUs, or 1.9%, relative to the minimal-engagement baseline. Providers in the higher-depth group posted a larger incremental increase of about 1.57 daily wRVUs, or 4.1%. Combined, engaged providers showed an average incremental increase of approximately 0.99 daily wRVUs, or roughly 3%, above the baseline.

Chris Carson, a senior advisor at Simpliphy with more than 30 years of experience in physician compensation and medical group operations, said the gap between the two engagement tiers suggests physicians are doing more than passively glancing at a report.

"If the effect came only from logging in once or twice, the lower- and higher-depth engagement groups would likely look more alike," Carson said. "Instead, the productivity gain more than doubled, rising from +1.9% in the lower-depth group to +4.1% in the higher-depth group. To me, that suggests physicians may be using the information, not merely viewing it."

Carson said that kind of visibility can shape daily clinical behavior in practical ways. A physician might track production pace, use a procedure calendar to connect completed work with credited production or recognize earlier in the year whether they're ahead of or behind their compensation expectations, he said.

Translated into an actual workday, the gain likely isn't one dramatic shift, Carson said.

"A gain of +0.99 daily wRVUs doesn't necessarily mean physicians are suddenly seeing significantly more patients every day," he said. "More realistically, it may show up as a few additional encounters over the course of a week, more accurate coding, a better understanding of how work is being credited or greater awareness of production trends throughout the year."

Annualized, the combined 0.99 daily wRVU gain works out to roughly 230 additional wRVUs per physician over a working year, according to the white paper. Carson said that figure "may not feel dramatic on any given day" for an individual physician, but that "over time, and especially across a large physician population, those incremental gains become much more meaningful."

The white paper cautions that the findings describe an observed relationship only and don't establish causation, and don't account for every possible confounding variable. For broader context, the paper cites the Kaufman Hall Physician Flash Report, which found provider and physician wRVUs per FTE rising roughly 3% to 4% year over year — in line with the baseline productivity movement seen across the full, unsegmented Simpliphy dataset.

One point Carson emphasized is that the productivity differences emerged without any change to compensation structure or added management pressure. Engagement with the platform was voluntary throughout the study and wasn't tied to performance reviews or pay decisions.

Asked about physician wariness toward productivity-tracking tools, Carson drew a distinction between surveillance and access.

"Physicians are understandably wary of tools that feel designed to monitor or manage them," he said. "But there is an important difference between adding oversight and giving physicians clearer access to information that already exists. ... In this study, physicians were not required to use the platform, and engagement was not connected to performance management or compensation decisions."

Carson also said most physicians already grasp their compensation plan's general structure but often lack a real-time sense of how daily clinical activity converts into production, earnings and year-end pay. "Even when reports are available, they may not answer the questions physicians care about most: Where do I stand? What am I tracking toward?" he said.

That gap between generating compensation data and making it usable to physicians is a recurring theme elsewhere in research of physician pay. A November survey of 197 rural health organizations conducted by Stroudwater Associates, in partnership with the National Rural Health Association and the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health, found that compensation structures at many rural hospitals remain disconnected from productivity and market benchmarks. Nearly 44% of responding organizations still paid physicians and advanced practice providers a straight salary with no incentive component — down from 54.7% the year before, but still the prevailing model. "Straight salary is not aligned with best practices," Carol Alexander, a senior advisor and board member at Stroudwater Associates, said in the report. "Rural health care organizations are under pressure, and hospitals need providers to do more than just show up."

More than 42% of hospitals had no defined patient-facing hour requirement at all, and only 18 of the surveyed hospitals met the widely accepted 36-hour patient-facing standard for a full-time physician. None of the surveyed hospitals reported using the current-year Medicare physician fee schedule to calculate wRVUs, and roughly two-thirds were still relying on the 2023 schedule. "There simply isn't enough money in the system to sustain rising compensation costs without a clear understanding of provider productivity, patient volumes and patient access needs," Alexander said. "Without greater transparency and alignment, the financial outcomes are not sustainable."

Where the Stroudwater findings illustrate the risk of opaque, disconnected compensation structures, a separate February op-ed in Medical Economics made the case for the opposite approach. Withum healthcare valuation consultants Chris Marrs and Anthony Venette argued that physician compensation "is one of the most important drivers of health system and medical group success, because it affects compliance with federal law, the economics of service lines and the overall stability of the organization." Compensation frameworks, they wrote, need to be grounded in fair market value and paired with performance analytics under the Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute — "without accurate benchmarking and performance analytics, compensation decisions risk drifting away from fair market value, productivity expectations and organizational goals." They pointed to enforcement actions against Tuomey Healthcare System ($237 million), Christ Hospital ($108 million) and St. Joseph Medical Center ($22 million) as examples of the financial stakes involved, and concluded that "without data-driven visibility, organizations often fail to detect issues or opportunities until the problems become significant."

The white paper doesn't address whether the productivity gains observed during the study period will hold up over time or represent a one-time adjustment as physicians recalibrate to newly visible data. Carson said Simpliphy intends to study that question by following the same physicians over a longer period.

"My view is that both dynamics may be present," he said. "Some physicians may use the data to better understand their compensation and establish a new baseline. Others may continue engaging because the information remains valuable as goals change, compensation models evolve, workloads shift or new opportunities arise during the year."