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Provider compensation rose again in 2025. On the surface, that sounds like progress: health systems investing in their workforce, rewarding productivity and staying competitive in a tight labor market. But a closer look at the latest AMGA 2026 Medical Group Compensation and Productivity Survey reveals a more sobering reality.
The issue isn’t that provider pay is increasing. The issue is how those increases are being funded, which is by asking providers to do more. This strategy has reached its limit.
A growing imbalance
The survey shows overall clinical compensation rising 4.3% in 2025 across nearly 188,000 providers. Primary care, specialty care and even radiology/anesthesiology/pathology all saw meaningful increases.
But reimbursement didn’t rise with it.
Health systems are effectively funding compensation growth through higher work Relative Value Unit (RVU) production – the standard measure of clinical work – and increased visit volumes as opposed to improved payer contracts. AMGA researchers estimate roughly half of compensation growth is now tied directly to productivity, not revenue. In plain terms, providers are earning more because they’re doing more, not because payers are paying more for the care they deliver increasing provider burnout
That’s not sustainable. When reimbursement is stagnant, every new dollar of compensation has to come from somewhere — and right now, it’s coming from providers themselves, through heavier workloads, more complex visits and mounting pressure on care teams.
Productivity is nearing its ceiling
This Becker’s article highlights a critical warning: productivity is topping out.
Work RVUs increased 2.4% overall, and visit volumes rose 2%. In primary care, visits actually fell 2.2% — but wRVUs per visit increased, signaling that physicians are managing more complex patients in each encounter.
This is not a sustainable lever.
Providers are already adjusting their FTEs and seeking alternative work arrangements. Health systems like Asante cannot rely on productivity as the primary mechanism to fund compensation.
Flat reimbursement, labor shortages and increased demand
The financial pressures facing health systems today are structural, not cyclical:
- Stagnant Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement
- Declining commercial payer mix
- Persistent labor shortages across clinical and non‑clinical roles
- Growing expectations around flexibility, team‑based care and work‑life balance
In this environment, rising provider pay is not a luxury – it’s a necessity. It reflects the realities of recruitment, retention and the complexity of modern care delivery.
But when compensation grows faster than reimbursement, health care organizations face a widening gap that productivity alone cannot bridge.
The conversation we should be having
Provider compensation increases are not the driver of financial strain; they’re the symptom of a system where reimbursement fails to reflect the true cost and complexity of care.
The real conversation should be about:
- Modernizing reimbursement models
- Investing in advanced practice clinicians strategically
- Leveraging technology to reduce administrative burden
- Advocating for payer alignment with clinical realities
Health systems aren’t struggling because pay is rising. They’re struggling because everything else isn’t rising with it.
Call to action
The question Becker’s poses — How long can health systems afford rising provider pay? — is important. But the better question is: How long can health care afford stagnant reimbursement while care grows more complex and labor markets tighten?
The problem was never that provider pay is rising; it’s that stagnant reimbursement leaves productivity as the only way to pay for it.
Long-term sustainability lies not in slowing compensation growth, but in bringing reimbursement back in line with the work providers do and the true cost of delivering care.
