Preferred, which serves a rural area, puts great emphasis on its medical directors' roles, she says. They receive leadership training and are encouraged to be flexible and meet community needs, such as for added hours in clinics. They have a job description, an annual review and goals, such as generating revenue. Preferred's CEO, a physician, has company-wide incentives, says Lombardo. The company has divisions in emergency and correctional medicine, and medical consulting and coding, all of which provide pay incentives to managers.
Office managers have incentives, too, based on such items as keeping overhead down.
This is less than many would make seeing patients, especially those in high-paying specialties like orthopedics and ophthalmology. But it is fairly good pay for primary care physicians. It works because we're all working for the same goals. No one's trying to undercut the other. For full-time medical directors, group boards often decide to pay an amount that replaces the physician's practice income without replacing the opportunity cost of giving up practice, says Dobosenski.