Coker Group often speaks on the topic of physician compensation, with much of the focus on three key considerations: value-based healthcare, affordability, and scalability. Though each of these components warrants significant attention, we will focus here on the scalability piece.Recent statistics indicate that the healthcare industry has reached a tipping point where the number of employed physicians now outpaces the number of private practice physicians. This factor speaks to the dynamic of health systems growing their physician networks, and more physicians mean more compensation arrangements to manage. While the structural design of the compensation plan can play heavily into the ability to manage the model, this is not a one-stop solution. Meaning, even a perfectly designed model is often still adjudicated through complex spreadsheets that are subject to error and significant workforce to administer and manage.
As a 21st century solution to this problem, innovators are developing software technologies that will allow these models to be developed through an automated means. Coker has entered into this paradigm with our affiliation with ProCare PortalTM, a configurable rules engine that takes the compensation plan adjudication from the raw data to the paycheck, with transparency in between. Further, it puts the tools in the hands of the healthcare organization to administer the backend of the model to allow maximum configurability.While this industry is in its infancy, given the increasing complexity of compensation structures, coupled with the growth in the employed physician population, we see the technology as filling a tremendous need that will help address the scalability dynamics.
Coker is excited to offer ProCare to the healthcare industry. If your organization is struggling with scalability dynamics, a demo to ProCare is one phone call away!