The salary responsibility program for full-time faculty members in an academic clinical department

The authors report a system developed in the Department of Medicine of the University of Maryland School of Medicine to encourage members of the full-time faculty to assume greater responsibility for their compensation. A member of the department's administrative staff individually interviews each faculty member and fills out, with the member, a "scorecard" that contains the number of hours per month and per year that the member reports were spent on his or her duties--such as teaching, attending, and consulting--that are assigned by the department or its divisions. This report also contains the record of unassigned time devoted to research (for investigators) or to personal practice (for clinicians). Assigned duties includes the time spent by clinicians performing procedures such as bronchoscopy cardiac catheterization, and endoscopy. The department pays for the otherwise unsupported costs of salary and benefits associated with assigned duties, and the faculty member is responsible for part of his or her compensation for time spent in research or practice. The program was developed and the data collected during the summer and fall of 1995. The salary reductions were applied on July 1, 1996. During the 1996-97 academic year the department projects a savings of $110,362 from compensation withheld from faculty members unable to fulfill their salary responsibilities and not paid to members who left the department, in part because of expected reductions in their incomes. The program has stimulated other faculty members to develop salary support with even greater vigor than that might otherwise have shown.