Plan for compensating full-time physicians involved in medical education

In response to growing financial pressures, many academic institutions have begun rewarding full-time faculty primarily on the basis of productivity. This formula often over-rewards procedure-oriented specialists while poorly compensating primary care physicians. Collections have little to do with c linical effort, and rewarding productivity alone ignores the many other qua lities important to the academic mission. We developed a simple, adjustable plan for quantifying and rewarding faculty behavior consistent with the go als of the institution. Eight categories are weighed by the departmental ch airperson or committee, including previous year's salary, productivity, pat ient satisfaction, administration, academic rank, teaching, research, and q uality of care. This plan is flexible and rewards behavior consistent with departmental priorities. It also allows for individual members of the depar tment to increase their salaries by adjusting their behavior. As federal fu nds for training continue to decrease, teaching, research, and other schola rly activities might not be fairly compensated. Unless each institution pro spectively develops a program that rewards those activities that the instit ution values, many important scientific and educational activities will be completely replaced by the more tangible efforts of patient care. (Obstet G ynecol 1999; 93:614-8. (C) 1999 by The American College of Obstetricians an d Gynecologists.).