General Surgery Call Coverage Compensation Correlates to Physician Call Burden

Since 2019, BuckheadFMV has conducted a national direct-to-physician call coverage survey. The survey provides meaningful data that informs fair market value appraisals and helps the industry better understand the physician burden factors associated with unrestricted call coverage arrangements. A key objective of the survey is tracking the relationship between unrestricted call coverage responsibilities and physician compensation across different specialties.

In a retrospective analysis, one interesting finding we noticed is that the per diem call coverage rate for General Surgery is strongly correlated with the average number of in-person visits per shift, year over year. We identified this correlation through longitudinal analysis of all seven years of the BFMV Call Coverage Survey data.

The chart below illustrates the relationship between General Surgery call compensation and the physician-reported average number of in-person visits required during on-call shifts. Our takeaway from this is that physician call arrangements requiring more physician in-person visits (on average) tend to pay higher compensation per diem (and vice versa). When more in-person visits are required, call compensation tends to be higher, and for arrangements requiring fewer in-person visits, call compensation is lower. The chart represents the median benchmark correlation between in-person burden and per diem rates, as measured across seven years of annual data collection.