7 Key Takeaways from the 2024 BFMV Physician Leaders Compensation Report

BFMV recently released the 2024 Physician Leaders Compensation Report. Our primary interest in undertaking this study was tracking physician executive titles and pay trends. Here are seven key takeaways from the report.

1. The most common physician executive titles are Chief Medical Officer and Medical Director.

Interesting to note the high representation of CMOs. According to the American Association for Physician Leadership, the role of CMOs is changing and increasingly becoming a full-time administrative position.

“Historically, the CMO role was neither well-defined nor critical. The CMO role was frequently filled by a senior physician, often as a part-time position, who functioned primarily to influence staff physicians to perform at higher standards and to accept administrative policies… Over the past 20 years, the CMO role has evolved far beyond peer review and privileging, to include utilization review, program growth and development, practice acquisition, integrating health systems, and aligning and coordinating ambulatory and inpatient care, technology acquisition and implementation, process improvement, and regulatory compliance, among others.”

Recently, the American Association for Physician Leadership has published a new book, I Want to Be a Chief Medical Officer: Now What? They explain what a CMO does, the experience needed, how to find CMO jobs, advice from previous CMOS, as well as what to do once you become a CMO.

2. Leadership position affects average compensation.

The table below presents the average compensation for 19 leadership positions worldwide. We found that the highest-paid physician leaders were Physician Group/Operations President ($850,413) and Alignment, Integration, Transformation Chief/SVP ($842,366).

3. Primary care providers fill a large percentage of physician leadership roles.

Of the 3,436 physician leaders, 53% were identified as primary care physicians. This is notable, mainly because primary care physicians make up only around 30% of the US physician workforce.

4. Leadership pay tracks clinical specialty.

The data indicates that physician leaders with specialized clinical backgrounds are paid more than those with primary care backgrounds. Of the 38 types of physicians (based on specialty) to serve as a CMO, emergency medicine, cardiology, and endocrinology had the highest median compensation.

5. Physician executives in hospitals trend higher.

Median physician leader compensation across all types of organizations was approximately $310,000. In hospitals, it was approximately $467,000.

6. The size of an organization has an impact on physician leader pay.

The positive correlation between organizational size and physician leader compensation was supported in the data. The chart below shows median physician leader compensation of just above $500,000 in organizations with over $1 billion and just above $200,000 in organizations with revenues of less than $10 million.

7. Compensation from each leadership position differs by state.

Our last key takeaway is that compensation differs by state within each leadership position. Perhaps because of circumstances related to recruitment, relocation, and retention, these data points provide assistance for fine-tuning the national benchmarks and may offer additional support for possible negotiations.