Physician Compensation That Attracts, Retains, & Motivates
As payment models and care delivery expectations evolve, physician compensation programs must reinforce accountability, support recruitment and retention, and align incentives with organizational priorities.
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Compensation Models That Keep Pace With Changing Care Delivery
Health care organizations face growing pressure to improve access, quality, and financial performance while navigating workforce shortages and increasing provider burnout. At the same time, compensation expectations are shifting across generations.
Legacy compensation models often struggle to reflect these realities. Without a structured approach to defining performance and aligning incentives, organizations may experience inconsistent plan administration, misaligned behavior, and increasing scrutiny around pay practices.
Partnering with SullivanCotter
Align Compensation With Strategy, Performance, and Sustainability
SullivanCotter helps hospitals, health systems, and medical groups design physician compensation programs that reflect evolving care models and support enterprise-wide goals. Our advisors bring deep physician workforce experience and the industry’s most comprehensive compensation and productivity benchmarking insight to guide compensation strategy decisions with confidence.
Through a disciplined discovery, design, and implementation process, we help organizations clarify work effort expectations, align incentives with performance priorities, and build compensation programs that are competitive, defensible, and built to adapt over time.
How We Help
Health care organizations can attract and retain critical talent, drive performance, and align compensation through integrated compensation and total rewards strategies designed in partnership with SullivanCotter.
Define physician performance expectations and outcomes
Select value-based metrics aligned with strategic goals
Evaluate measurement systems and scorecard effectiveness
Inventory current compensation plans and identify gaps
Evaluate strengths, weaknesses, and operational challenges
Benchmark against market practices and peer organizations
Support survey selection and competitive market comparisons
Develop physician compensation philosophy and pay-mix strategy
Create conceptual compensation models and incentive frameworks
Align productivity, quality, access, and team-based incentives
Conduct financial modeling and cost impact analysis
Stakeholder interviews and physician engagement support
Communication planning and implementation assistance
Plan administration support and ongoing refinement
Insight Spotlight
Developing Incentives That Strengthen Clinical Leadership
As health systems place greater emphasis on physician leadership, organizations are rethinking how incentive programs support medical directors, service line leaders, and other clinical leadership roles. In this video, SullivanCotter explores approaches to designing clinical leadership incentives that reinforce accountability, align with organizational priorities, and support sustainable leadership engagement.
“Physician compensation programs must do more than reward productivity—they need to align with strategy, support quality outcomes, and drive long-term organizational performance.”
— Kevin Wilson, Managing Director, SullivanCotter
Benchmark Physician Compensation
With Confidence
SullivanCotter’s physician compensation and productivity benchmarking data provides one of the most comprehensive views of market practices across specialties, settings, and organizational types. Leaders use this insight to evaluate competitiveness, assess productivity norms, and support compensation design decisions that are defensible and aligned with workforce realities.
Pulse on the Industry
Stay current with SullivanCotter’s research and thought leadership on physician compensation trends, productivity and work effort approaches, value-based incentive design, and evolving care delivery models.
More Services to Explore
Partner with SullivanCotter to strengthen internal capabilities in compensation planning, benchmarking, and workforce data management
Let’s Architect Your Solution
Ready to build a physician compensation strategy that supports performance, engagement,
and long-term sustainability? Contact SullivanCotter to get started.
