2025 ACR Economic Benchmark Survey to Cover Key Practice Metrics

closeup of a survey questionnaire form and pencil

What is your practice’s payer mix? How are you and your colleagues using AI? These are the kinds of questions the ACR will soon be asking the entire membership through an economic benchmark survey slated for distribution in the spring. When it arrives, it’s important that you return it and contribute to a comprehensive, accurate dataset that will help the ACR better address members’ needs and offer guidance for your own business decisions.

The survey is designed to gain a better understanding of a wide range of economic factors academic and community rheumatology practices now face. The last such ACR membership survey for the practice community was in 2009, making this assessment long overdue, says ACR Committee on Rheumatologic Care (CORC) Chair Chris Phillips, MD. Dr. Phillips and CORC members have collaborated with the College to create a comprehensive survey that will turn practice trends into trackable metrics. The ACR Division Directors Committee published the Academic Benchmarking Report in 2022, which the ACR will update and expand on in the new survey.

The 2025 survey will be far more comprehensive than previous surveys and collect benchmark data on updated topics. “It’s hard to believe how much has changed in the rheumatology ecosystem since the last survey,” Dr. Phillips notes. For example, “one question in the 2009 practice survey asked how many practices were on, or planning to be on, electronic medical records! Needless to say, new data will be valuable.”

Survey Metrics at a Glance

The 2025 ACR Economic Benchmark Survey will collect wide-ranging data points relevant to ACR members today across different aspects of practice. The survey will address the following topics:

• Productivity—Metrics will include current relative value units (RVUs), patient volume, charge code mix, days in clinic and provider time off;
• Financial—Metrics will address survey overhead costs, payer mix and salary ranges;
• Technology—Metrics will query which electronic medical record (EMR) systems are in place, use of scribes, use of AI and marketing tactics employed;
• Staffing—Metrics will cover staff number and use of advanced practice providers;
• Ancillary—Metrics will assess which ancillary services practices are using, with a focus on various infusion clinic metrics and group purchasing organization affiliations; and 
• Workforce—Metrics will cover practice types, patient wait times, plans for bringing on new providers and retirement plans.

Why Sharing Your Input Matters

Dr. Phillips encourages members to work with their practice managers or other office staff to report the most accurate data possible. “We know that the demands on everyone’s time are great, but the time spent responding to this survey will help you, the College and your colleagues to be as well positioned as possible to address current and future business challenges and maintain healthy practices that improve your job satisfaction, support your bottom line, and meet your patients’ needs for years to come.”

Jim Oates, MD, a current member of the ACR Board of Directors and past chair of the Division Directors Committee, concurs with the encouragement for all members from the practice and academic communities to respond to the survey. He says the Academic Benchmark survey has proved useful to faculty in negotiating contracts and understanding their benchmarks compared with colleagues in similar institutions and geographic locations.

The data generated will only be as useful as the input received, and the more responses received, the more robust the results will be. “The rheumatology community as a whole will benefit if as many members as possible take time to fill out the survey,” Dr. Phillips adds.

How to Use Benchmark Survey Findings

Once responses are collected, the ACR will generate a comprehensive report that will be made available to members online.  “For the ACR, survey findings will help identify the needs of members, including what they are struggling with, where advocacy efforts need to be addressed and what we can do better to help practices succeed,” says Dr. Phillips.

Additionally, members will have a valuable benchmarking tool to understand how they are performing relative to their peers and to guide them in the business decisions that will maintain their economic viability. As a rheumatology small business owner, Dr. Phillips looks forward to seeing how his metrics such as patient wait time and overhead compare to those of his peers in order to gain insight into what he can do better. “It’s so helpful to the health of the practice to keep a finger on the pulse of where the field is going business-wise, and I see this as one of the ways to do that.”

Carina Stanton is a freelance science journalist based in Denver.