TrustCommerce CRO Ryne Natzke

Providers

Physician Compensation Rebounds

The numbers are in. Doximity’s always-anticipated Physician Compensation Report showed that overall compensation grew 5.9% last year – a welcome rebound after the 2.4% dip in 2022. 

Survey responses from 33k doctors brought more good news than that, with medicine’s gender wage gap narrowing to 23%, down from 26% in 2022.

• Decent improvement, but women physicians are still taking home an average of $102k less than men after controlling for specialty, location, and experience.

Neurosurgeons continued to top the charts at $764k, nearly 4X the annual compensation of their pediatric endocrinologist peers at the bottom of the totem pole ($217k).

Other interesting highlights from the report included the fact that 81% of physicians reported feeling overworked, causing many to consider an employment change (59%) or early retirement (30%).

• 88% of physicians also said that their practice has been impacted by the physician shortage, three-quarters of which described the impact as “moderate” or “severe.”

• Funnily enough, the physician shortage wasn’t even the leading contributor to burnout, which 70% of respondents pinned squarely on administrative burden.

Despite recording a slight increase, total physician compensation has dropped 26% since 2001 when accounting for inflation. As it currently stands, only 40% of physicians are happy with their compensation, and more of these disgruntled doctors are unfortunately eyeing the exit.

The Takeaway

Physicians are still overworked and the wage gap is barely moving in the right direction, but at least they can rest easy knowing inflation is barely eating into their total compensation…

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The Wire

• Tough Comedown for MDMA: In a decision that shocked many mental health advocates, an independent advisory committee to the FDA voted overwhelmingly to reject MDMA treatment for PTSD – a recommendation that the FDA usually follows. Although clinical trials cited in the FDA application saw MDMA-assisted psychotherapy create dramatic improvement in 80% of participants, the advisory committee felt the studies had significant shortcomings, such as the fact that both the patients and their therapists could almost always tell whether they had received a placebo.

• LeanTaaS Product Enhancements: LeanTaaS’ annual product summit brought the announcement of several new capabilities for its hospital “air traffic control” platform. Existing partners will soon have access to the Real-Time View mobile solution that improves perioperative coordination with on-the-go views of the live OR schedule. They’ll also be able to use the iQueue Autopilot for GenAI support for patient flow, scheduling, and other capacity management use cases.

• Hospital Performance Gap: Kaufman Hall’s latest Flash Report revealed that hospital operating margins ticked up to 4.3% in April, breaking a three-month streak of declines. Outpatient revenue increased 10% on-year, while average length of stay dropped 4% and ED visits increased to pre-pandemic levels. The story beneath the surface-level margin improvements is that the performance gap continues to widen, with the best performing hospitals now seeing 28.9% margins, versus -16.1% for the worst performers (95th vs. 5th percentile).

• Eko Series D: Eko Health raised $41M in Series D funding (total raised now $165M) to deepen its commercial presence in the US and fund its international expansion. Eko Health is best known for its smart stethoscope, although the announcement revealed what appears to be a broader focus on AI-enabled heart and lung disease detection, with ten mentions of “AI” or “algorithms,” and just one mention of its stethoscopes at the very bottom of the press release.

• Upsurge in Data Breaches: This week’s least surprising headline was that healthcare data breaches are on the rise, with new HHS data showing that 226 successful attacks took place in just the first quarter of 2024. That’s 69 more breaches than the same period last year, despite not yet including major attacks on Change Healthcare and Ascension. The upsurge in breaches prompted the HHS to set voluntary cybersecurity goals for hospitals, but it plans to mandate certain practices “in the coming years.”

• HHS Does What It Wants: True to its name, the Government Accountability Office called out HHS for lacking accountability. HHS has implemented just 7 of 45 recommendations that the GOA noted as priorities last May, well below its usual compliance rate of 68%. The watchdog org said HHS still has work to do, such as improving adjustment accuracy for Medicare Advantage reimbursement and implementing policies to better coordinate with other agencies on cybersecurity.

• AcuityMD Hauls in $45M: Medtech data platform AcuityMD hauled in a $45M Series B (total funding now $83M) to fuel the launch of “three new products” and expand the reach of its pipeline management solution. AcuityMD helps tie medical devices to patient outcomes so manufacturers can track the performance of their products and equip their field reps with more data.

• Telemental Health for Undergrads: New research in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities demonstrated how telehealth can help reach historically marginalized populations on college campuses. Data from 113 colleges using TimelyCare’s virtual mental health platform revealed that Asian, Black, and Multiracial undergraduates accessed the services at a higher rate than would be expected based on the demographics of each institution. On the opposite end, proportionally fewer White and Hispanic students accessed the services.

• CirrusMD’s VA Health Chat Roll Out: CirrusMD completed its national roll out of VA Health Chat, the culmination of a multi-year effort to expedite care for over 6.8 million veterans. Building on CirrusMD’s expertise in on-demand virtual care, VA Health Chat provides veterans with nearly immediate access during VA operating hours, facilitating secure conversations with care teams and guidance toward various location-dependent services.

• Heart Disease in 2050: An AHA Presidential Advisory warned of massive heart disease increases in the US by 2050, revealing some truly astounding numbers. The AHA predicts huge increases in CVD (+60% to 45m), diabetes (+100% to 80M), obesity (+70% to 180M), hypertension (+44% to 180M), heart failure (+66% to 11M), and stroke (+100% to 19M). Add all that up and the cost of treating adult CVD and stroke patients will increase by 195% to $1.85 trillion, representing 4.6% of US GDP.

• Clover Debuts Counterpart Assistant: Clover Health’s clinical decision-making AI will now be offered as a SaaS product to payors and providers outside of Clover’s own MA plan, opening a new path to growth on the back of Clover’s existing tech. Members with at least one visit involving the Counterpart Assistant AI are 37% more likely to have their blood pressure controlled and 21% more likely to have a colorectal screening, so it makes sense that Clover’s “hybrid SaaS model” includes options for full capitation.

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