MGMA and PA Compensation
The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) is the organization for those who are leading medical practices. If you’re interested in managing a medical group or obtaining information on this topic the MGMA is going to be your resource. As AAPA is a resource for PAs, MGMA is a resource for leaders in medical practices. Many medical groups use this as a source to determine compensation for physicians as well as PAs and NPs.
Basically, this is the professional organization for the enemy – administration. Those we go to battle with about how things are done. If you’re told to click a certain button or change the way you do things it’s probably because of recommendations from MGMA on what is most efficient. Membership is open to individuals as well as groups and with most professional organizations there is a “small” fee to join.
As PA’s we have access to a variety of salary surveys. The AAPA and NCCPA surveys are the ones I typically like to reference. A part of what MGMA does, is provide data on group practice to its members. The data comes from practices who take part in the survey; including academic practices to hospital and private practice. The MGMA considers itself the gold standard for the industry.
If you are compensated based on workRVUs your compensation is most likely based on recommendations from MGMA as they seem to be the barometer on this information. The data from the salary surveys that they provide represents a variety of practice types and breaks down compensation into total compensation and bonus/incentive compensation as well as other benefits.
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If you’re a new PA or are changing jobs and may be wondering where your practice is getting information, it might be from MGMA. Due to the relatively low number of PAs compared to Physician and especially PAs in certain specialties the data they have on PAs is somewhat limited. It is important to keep this in mind whenever you enter a negotiation – where is the data coming from and is it accurate?
I’ve heard on a number of occasion’s practices only looking at data for PAs in primary care but it is for a position in a specialty. Not all surveys break down the information into every specialty and I’ve seen it broken down into just three categories – inpatient, outpatient and surgical.
MGMA conducts surveys on more than just provider compensation, including management compensation, cost and revenue and practice operations.
If you’re negotiating a salary it is important to know what your employer is using for data and MGMA compensation report is probably one resource they are using, but also make sure they are comparing apples to apples – compensation for dermatology is going to be much different than primary care. Make sure you’re getting paid fairly for what you’re doing and if needed use other resources to compare.
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