American Association of Endocrine Surgeons statement on clinical productivity and compensation for endocrine surgeons

Although endocrine surgery is an established and expanding subspecialty of general surgery, there is a paucity of data about endocrine surgery practice patterns, compensation models, and clinical productivity. The American Association of Endocrine Surgeons sought to understand practice patterns, compensation models, productivity, and other factors that impact the daily work of its members.

A 40-question electronic survey was distributed in April 2021 to active members of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons practicing in the United States. The survey collected information on career demographics; clinical practice characteristics, including clinical volume (clinic patients seen and operations performed), practice type (academic, private practice, or mixed), scope of practice, work relative value units, and self-reported total cash compensation.

There was a 30% response rate. There was significant diversity in practice setting, geographic location, academic rank, clinical volume, case-mix, on-call requirements, and compensation structure. A 1.0 full-time equivalent clinical endocrine surgeon in fiscal year 2019 (prepandemic) performed an average of 25 operative cases per month and saw 22 outpatients per week, of which 12 were new patients. Missing data prohibited accurate analysis of relationships between clinical effort, productivity (work relative value units), and total cash compensation.

Future work is necessary to establish endocrine surgery as a unique subspecialty regarding productivity targets and compensation. These efforts should include reporting accurate endocrine surgery data to third parties distributing compensation surveys, updating and creating Current Procedural Terminology codes to accurately reflect procedures performed, and establishing benchmarks based on achievable volume targets for the modern endocrine surgeon.