A few years ago, I worked with a practice where leadership couldn’t figure out why physician productivity was stuck below benchmark year after year. They kept pushing the physicians to “just see more patients,” but nothing changed. It seemed obvious, in hindsight, but here’s what was really happening: the physicians literally couldn’t fit more patients into their day because there weren’t enough exam rooms.
Leadership had missed this constraint for a simple reason: they were so focused on the numbers that they didn’t stop to consider the day-to-day realities on the ground. They assumed physicians could always “just work harder” without looking closely at the system those physicians worked in. Their frustration translated into more pressure and that pressure bred distrust, resentment, and burnout.
This is the hidden danger of relying too heavily on benchmarks.
Is your practice using publicly available benchmarks—say, the national median WRVU data—to set physician performance targets?
I get it. Benchmarks feel objective, authoritative, and easy. But there’s a catch: they’re built from data that describes “the average practice.” I’m willing to bet your practice isn’t average.
When performance targets aren’t grounded in your specific reality, they can quietly erode trust, increase burnout, and even push you further from your goals.
The trouble with one-size-fits-all targets
No two practices are the same. Your patient population, payer mix, support staff, physical space, and many other factors shape what’s possible for your physicians.
Standard benchmarks don’t account for any of that nuance. They’re pulled from large national samples of practices that can (and do!) vary widely in resources, structure, strategy, and capacity.
When you lean too much on these external data points, they can end up with:
- Goals that look authoritative but feel unrealistic
- Misaligned incentives that waste time and money
- Physician dissatisfaction (even when they hit their numbers)
- Compliance risk in compensation plans
- Strategic drift as you chase percentiles instead of purpose
Bottom line: if your physicians feel like they’re being measured against a system that wasn’t built for them, they’ll disengage.
A better path: build your own benchmarks
I’m not anti-benchmark; in fact, I think benchmarks can be powerful tools. But I do believe that the most useful benchmarks are the ones you build yourself, based on your practice’s actual operations, actual capabilities, and actual goals.
That means defining what “good performance” looks like in your context. It means involving physicians in setting expectations. And it means relying on your own data and lived experience, not just national or even regional tables.
Take a hard look at how your practice measures physician performance. Ask yourself:
- Are we using someone else’s yardstick?
- Do these goals reflect what’s actually possible in our practice?
- What data or insights do we need to make this process more grounded?
- Do our physicians feel the targets are fair and achievable?
When you do this well, benchmarks do more than measure. They motivate. They support your physicians rather than stress them out. And they define success based on your reality.
