Call Coverage Rates Remain High for Trauma Services

Written by Dan Oppenheimer

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In our last blog post, we investigated which medical and surgical specialties were most likely to be paid for call coverage contracts.  In this post, we’ll look at MD Ranger’s 2017 physician contracting benchmarks and examine which call coverage agreements had the highest per diem compensation rates.

As the graph shows, the highest compensated call coverage specialties in 2017 are Trauma Neurosurgery, Trauma Surgery, Orthopedic Trauma Surgery, Neurosurgery, Obstetric Anesthesia, and Neuro-Interventional.  In fact, Trauma Neurosurgery, the largest individual call coverage per diem rate, is more than double those of the fourth place service (neurosurgery) and nearly three times those of the fifth place service (OB Anesthesia).

This list of top paid services varies a small amount from last year, when the highest paid call specialties were Critical/Intensive Care, Obstetric Anesthesia, Neurosurgery, General Hospitalists, Orthopedic Trauma Surgery, and Trauma Surgery.

One clear year over year trend shown by the data is that trauma services pull in far and away the highest per diems of all call coverage specialties.  These high per diem rates for trauma specialties should come as no surprise given the burden placed on call panels and the number of restrictions on physicians’ activities during call shifts

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