MGMA Report Details Cost Concerns and Inflation Challenges in the Medical Industry

Cost increases are driving budgetary challenges for health systems, hospitals, and medical groups

ENGLEWOOD, Colo., July 26, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) released a new report detailing the significant challenges facing health systems, medical practices, and hospitals due to inflation, rising expenses, and staffing shortages. The 2022 edition of MGMA DataDive Cost and Revenue, which reflects data from more than 4,000 organizations spanning a variety of specialties and practice types, reveals several compounding financial and economic factors are having a major financial impact across the healthcare industry.

For additional analysis of the data, MGMA created the data report, "Maintaining Margin in the Inflation Era." The data report provides commentary and insight into the DataDive Cost and Revenue data set, including key findings on the ongoing impacts of productivity gaps compared to pre-pandemic benchmarks, uneven financial recoveries of physician-owned and hospital-owned practices, trends in total medical revenue by ownership and specialty type, increases in operating expenses, and declines in staffing levels.

"Costs have risen to a point where the margins of medical groups are imperiled in ways we haven't seen since the early lockdown months of 2020," said Dr. Halee Fischer-Wright, MD, MMM, FAAP, FACMPE, president and chief executive officer of MGMA. "The data in this report underscores the crucial financial strain that many of these businesses faced in 2021 and we've seen this trend not only continue but intensify into this year."

MGMA's "Maintaining Margin in the Inflation Era" report includes an enhanced analysis of data from MGMA DataDive Cost and Revenue. Key findings include:

• Productivity levels are still lower for most physician-owned and hospital-owned practices compared to 2019 (pre-pandemic levels).
• Total medical revenue increased across the board within the last year — another suggestion of practice operations starting to return to pre-pandemic levels — with the biggest jump occurring in physician-owned, nonsurgical practices.
• Physician-owned primary care and nonsurgical specialty practices experienced an increase in operating costs from 2020 to 2021. The decrease in demand for surgical practices may be attributed to a pause in elective surgeries during COVID-19 surges.
• Hospital-owned practices saw some of the most significant jumps in operating costs per full-time physician from 2020 to 2021, while hospital-owned primary care practices saw a nearly 11 percent decline year over year.

The report includes additional findings on rising malpractice costs, statistics on the impact of inflation on medical practices, and cost-containment analysis and strategies. Download the data report for more in-depth analysis and reporting.

About MGMA
Founded in 1926, the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) is the nation's largest association focused on the business of medical practice management. MGMA consists of 15,000 group medical practices ranging from small private medical practices to large national health systems representing more than 350,000 physicians. MGMA helps nearly 60,000 medical practice leaders and the healthcare community solve the business challenges of running practices so that they can focus on providing outstanding patient care. Specifically, MGMA helps its members innovate and improve profitability and financial sustainability, and it provides the gold standard on industry benchmarks such as physician compensation. The association also advocates extensively on its members' behalf on national regulatory and policy issues. To learn more, go to MGMA.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Media Contact: Brad Krebs, 314-973-8090, [email protected]

SOURCE Medical Group Management Association