Physician Employment Contract Total Compensation Calculator
Models a real physician employment contract — base salary, a tiered wRVU productivity bonus with two rate thresholds, benefits value, and an amortized signing bonus — and shows your true total annual compensation. Also compares your contract's actual structure against a simple "greater of base or flat production" guarantee model, so you can see which one really pays more at your production level. Built for physicians evaluating a job offer or renewal, and for practice administrators and recruiters who want to model out an offer before presenting it, not just quote a base salary and a vague bonus structure.
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Tiered wRVU Productivity Bonus
Models two graduated rate thresholds instead of a single flat rate, so wRVUs above your second tier are credited at the higher rate your contract actually pays.
Base + Bonus vs. Guarantee, Side by Side
Runs your production through both a stacking base + bonus structure and a "greater of base or flat production" guarantee model, so you can see exactly which structure pays more at your wRVU level.
True Total Compensation Rollup
Adds benefits value and an amortized signing bonus on top of cash compensation, then divides by total wRVUs to show your effective all-in dollar-per-wRVU rate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the difference between a "base + bonus" and a "guarantee" physician compensation model?
In a base + bonus model, you're paid your full base salary no matter what, plus a separate bonus for wRVU production above a set threshold — the base and the bonus stack. In a guarantee model, you're paid the greater of your base salary or your production pay calculated at a flat rate across all your wRVUs — they don't stack, you get whichever number is bigger.
These structures can produce meaningfully different pay at the same production level, which is exactly why reading the contract language carefully matters more than just knowing your base salary and "a bonus structure." Using the calculator's defaults: a physician producing 6,800 wRVUs against a $250,000 base earns $377,000 in cash compensation under a base + bonus structure with tiered rates, versus $340,000 under a flat guarantee model — a $37,000 difference driven entirely by which structure the contract actually uses.
How do tiered (graduated) wRVU bonus rates work?
Instead of paying the same dollar amount for every wRVU above threshold, a tiered structure pays a higher rate once you clear a second, higher production level — rewarding physicians who produce well beyond the baseline expectation with a better rate on that upper tier, not just more units at the same rate.
Using the calculator's defaults: wRVUs between the Tier 1 threshold (4,500) and Tier 2 threshold (6,000) earn $50 each — that's 1,500 wRVUs worth $75,000. wRVUs above 6,000 earn the higher Tier 2 rate of $65 each — at 6,800 total production, that's 800 wRVUs worth $52,000. The combined $127,000 productivity bonus is meaningfully more than what a single flat $50/wRVU rate across all 6,800 units would produce ($340,000 in pure production pay, which is actually less than the $377,000 total cash comp the tiered structure delivers) — the tiered kicker is doing real work here.
What should count toward "total compensation" in a physician contract, beyond salary and bonus?
Benefits value (employer-paid health insurance, retirement match, CME allowance, malpractice/tail coverage) and any signing bonus, properly amortized over the period it's actually earned or at risk of repayment. Comparing offers on base salary and bonus structure alone while ignoring these components can make a lower-cash-comp offer look worse than it actually is, or vice versa.
Using the calculator's defaults: $377,000 in cash compensation (base + tiered bonus) plus $45,000 in annual benefits value plus $15,000 in amortized signing bonus ($30,000 over a 2-year amortization period) brings true total compensation to $437,000 — a full $60,000 above the cash-only figure. Two offers with identical cash compensation numbers can differ substantially in real value once benefits and signing bonuses are accounted for on equal footing.
Why amortize a signing bonus instead of counting the full amount in year one?
Because most physician signing bonuses come with a repayment clause — if you leave before a specified period (commonly 1-3 years), you owe some or all of it back. Treating the full signing bonus as pure year-one income overstates the offer's true annual value if you're evaluating it as an ongoing compensation figure rather than a one-time windfall you might have to return.
Using the calculator's defaults, a $30,000 signing bonus amortized over 2 years contributes $15,000 to the annual total compensation figure — a more honest way to compare an offer with a large signing bonus against one with a smaller (or no) signing bonus but a higher base salary, since the amortized view puts both on a comparable annual basis rather than letting a big one-time number distort the comparison.
How do I know if my $/wRVU rate is competitive for my specialty?
Compare the calculator's "Effective $ Per wRVU (All-In)" figure — your true total compensation divided by your total production — against published specialty benchmark percentiles (commonly sourced from surveys like MGMA or AMGA), rather than comparing your contract's stated bonus rate alone, since that rate doesn't capture your base salary, benefits, or signing bonus.
Using the calculator's defaults, $437,000 in total compensation across 6,800 wRVUs works out to an effective $64.26 per wRVU — a number you can hold up directly against your specialty's percentile benchmarks to see where you actually land, rather than relying on the headline bonus rate in your contract, which by itself tells you very little about your real all-in value once base salary, tiering, benefits, and signing bonus are all factored together.
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