title: Plan for compensating full-time physicians involved in medical education.
abstract: In response to growing financial pressures, many academic institutions have begun rewarding full-time faculty primarily on the basis of productivity. This formula often overrewards procedure-oriented specialists while poorly compensating primary care physicians. Collections have little to do with clinical effort, and rewarding productivity alone ignores the many other qualities important to the academic mission. We developed a simple, adjustable plan for quantifying and rewarding faculty behavior consistent with the goals of the institution. Eight categories are weighed by the departmental chairperson or committee, including previous year's salary, productivity, patient satisfaction, administration, academic rank, teaching, research, and quality of care. This plan is flexible and rewards behavior consistent with departmental priorities. It also allows for individual members of the department to increase their salaries by adjusting their behavior. As federal funds for training continue to decrease, teaching, research, and other scholarly activities might not be fairly compensated. Unless each institution prospectively develops a program that rewards those activities that the institution values, many important scientific and educational activities will be completely replaced by the more tangible efforts of patient care.
authors.affiliation: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA. milad@nwu.edu
authors.forename: M P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Milad
authors.forename: S K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Hendricks
authors.forename: L E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Williford
mesh_terms: D004501:Education, Medical / Q000191:economics*; D010820:Physicians / Q000191:economics*; D012456:Salaries and Fringe Benefits; D013663:Teaching / Q000191:economics*; D014481:United States