5 simple ways to increase RVUs in your medical practice
Making the leap into value-based care contracts aligns your medical practice with what many experts believe will be the future of healthcare payment reform. However, even as you transition to these new payment arrangements, you may also have many fee-for-service (FFS) contracts in place as well. With that said, if you want to grow your medical practice in the short-term, you’ll need to increase the relative value units (RVU) that payers use to determine your FFS payments. RVUs objectively identify cost components related to each procedure described in the CPT code set. However, they also enable health systems, providers, and payers to measure physician or group productivity, allocate resources, analyze performance, and benchmark costs. Therefore, understanding RVUs in medicine is critical.
What is an RVU?
What are RVUs for doctors? Think of them as measurements of value for each CPT code. The overall RVU for each code is based on the following three component RVUs:
Work, including the time and clinical skill necessary to provide the service
Practice expense, including labor and overhead costs
Professional liability insurance, including the cost of malpractice insurance premiums
How to calculate RVUs for your medical practice
Here’s how to calculate RVUs: Each component RVU is geographically adjusted based on your medical practice location. Summing these geographically adjusted components and then multiplying them by the Medicare Conversation Factor (a dollar amount updated annually), yields a payment amount associated with each CPT code. For calendar year (CY) 2025, the conversion factor is $32.35, a decrease of $0.94 (or 2.83%) from the current CY 2024 conversion factor of $33.29.
How to increase RVUs
Logically, when thinking the higher the overall RVU, the higher the payment. Are you wondering how to increase RVUs in your medical practice? Here’s the answer: By increasing your work RVU components. Following are five ways to do this:
1. See more patients. Increasing the average number of patients you see in your medical practice automatically increases your total work RVUs. Even one additional patient per day can make a difference.
2. Document patient acuity. Higher acuity patients yield higher work RVUs. Unfortunately, many physicians often under-document (and under-code), resulting in missed revenue opportunities. A clinical documentation audit can help identify areas of improvement.
For example, using current evaluation and management (E/M) guidelines that permit E/M code assignment based on time or medical necessity, treating an established patient who has one self-limiting problem or minor problem with minimal or no data and minimal risk (99212) yields a work RVU of 0.7 in 2024. Treating this same patient with two or more self-limited or minor problems, one stable chronic illness, or one acute uncomplicated illness or injury (99213) yields a work RVU of 1.30.
3. Document complexity of care. The more complex the care you provide in your medical practice, the higher the work RVU. For example, a simple laceration repair of a superficial 1.5cm wound on the scalp (12001) has a work RVU of 0.84 in 2024 whereas an intermediate repair of this same injury (12031) has a work RVU of 2.0.
4. Document time spent. Do you know your average visit duration for each visit type? Armed with this information, you may be able to adjust your medical practice schedule so you can see more patients per day or per session to meet your work RVU and revenue cycle management goals.
5. Expand high-value visits. New patients have higher work RVUs than established ones, so seeing a higher volume of new patients simultaneously increases your work RVUs. In addition, many procedures carry higher work RVUs than E/M office visits, so you may want to expand your scope of practice to include skin procedures, joint injections, and more. Transitional care management, chronic care management, and Medicare annual wellness visits are also high-value services that can boost your work RVUs.
Additional resources for understanding RVUs in medicine
Look for more resources on RVUs? Take a look at these:
Provider pay and the dawn of a new era of productivity, a May 2024 report from the Medical Group Management Association
Understanding and improving your work RVUs, an article from the American Academy of Family Physicians
edgeMED can help maximize RVUs in your medical practice
Increasing your RVUs requires accurate and complete medical coding along with the right technology to promote compliance and revenue integrity. Learn how edgeMED can help.
