Becker's Hospital Review

37 FINANCE CMO / CARE DELIVERY Average signing bonuses for 5 recruited medical specialties By Kelly Gooch I nternal medicine physicians saw the greatest average signing bonus offered to recruits this year among the five most requested medical specialties, according to Merritt Hawkins' 2020 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives. e report tracks a representative sample of 3,251 permanent physician and advanced prac- titioner recruiting engagements Merritt Haw- kins/AMN Healthcare's physician staffing com- panies conducted from April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020. Searches were primarily conducted for hospitals (36 percent) and group practices (32 percent) but also occurred for urgent care, federally quali- fied health centers, academics, the Indian Health Service and concierge medicine. Analysts found that signing bonuses offered to physicians averaged $27,893 this year, down from $32,692 the year prior. Average signing bonuses offered to nurse practitioners and phy- sician assistants also declined year over year, from $9,000 to $8,500. e following figures are signing bonuses for the five specialties most in demand. Internal Medicine Average: $26,000 High: $75,000 Low: $10,000 Family Practice Average: $25,100 High: $75,000 Low: $2,500 Psychiatry Average: $24,704 High: $50,000 Low: $10,000 OB-GYN Average: $24,660 High: $100,000 Low: $10,000 Radiology Average: $23,428 High: $100,000 Low: $8,000 n Definition of pain revised for first time in 40+ years By Anuja Vaidya F or the first time in over 40 years, the International Association for the Study of Pain revised the definition of pain in the hope it will lead to new ways of assessing pain. The new definition of pain is: "An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actu- al or potential tissue damage." There are also six additional notes that expand on the definition, including that pain is always a personal ex- perience and that a person's report of an experience as pain should be respected. The association developed the new definition in a yearslong process that included the creation of a multinational, multidisciplinary task force that received input from several stakeholders, including people suffering from pain and their caregivers, said Srinivasa Raja, MD, chair of the task force and director of pain research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medi- cine in Baltimore. The previous definition of pain read: "An unpleasant sensory and emo- tional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or de- scribed in terms of such damage." It was developed in 1979. But the wording was interpreted as excluding in- fants, elderly people and those who could not verbally articulate their pain, said Jeffrey Mogil, PhD, director of the Alan Edwards Center for Research on Pain at McGill University in Canada and a member of the task force. The revised definition was published July 16 in the association's official journal, Pain. n No link between blood type and COVID-19 severity, Harvard researchers say By Mackenzie Bean A patient's blood type does not influence whether he or she will have a more severe case of COVID-19, a study published July 12 in An- nals of Hematology found. Researchers at Boston-based Harvard Medical School examined data on 1,289 symptomatic adults who tested positive for the COVID-19 at five Boston hospitals between March 6 and April 16. They found no meaningful correlation between blood type and clinical outcomes of severity, such as hospitalization, intubation or death. There was also no connection between blood type and inflammatory markers, which is significant as COVID-19 is widely thought to cause systemic in- flammation in the body, researchers noted. While blood type did not play a role in COVID-19 severity, it may influence an individuals' chance of getting the virus. Researchers found patients with blood types B positive and AB positive were more likely to test positive for COVID-19. Patients with type O blood were less likely to have a positive result, which coincides with previous research on the topic. n

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