Assessing the potential versus the actual earnings of academic radiologists: Effects of unequal duty service assignments

Rationale and Objectives. The purpose of this study was to determine if ann ual total work relative value units (RVUs) can be used to accurately compar e physician productivity and effort among a small group of similarly traine d radiologists. Materials and Methods. The annual procedures for nine abdominal imaging rad iologists were obtained. The work RVU was assigned to each procedure and su mmed for each radiologist. The daily work RVU mean earnings by duty service (eg, ultrasound [US], gastrointestinal radiology) were calculated for each radiologist and for the entire group. Results. Annual total work RVUs earned by the six full-time radiologists ra nged widely (5,000 to >9,000). Mean work RVUs earned per day by all the rad iologists for each duty service also ranged widely (74 for US vs 23 for gas trointestinal radiology). The range of mean work RVUs earned per day by the radiologists within each duty service was narrower, however, and had almos t no statistical significance. The. wider range of annual total work RVUs e arned by the radiologists resulted primarily from unequal distribution of d uty service assignments. For example, radiologists with more days spent per forming gastrointestinal radiology had lower annual total RVUs compared to radiologists with more days spent performing computed tomography or US. Conclusion. The RVU is an accurate measure of income production but may be an inaccurate measure of effort and individual productivity because of diff erences in duty assignments. In a relatively homogeneous group of radiologi sts/practitioners, such a comparison should be done within a duty service, or a correcting methodology should be used, because assignment to duty serv ices rarely is equalized across physicians.