wRVU (Work Relative Value Unit)
Work RVUs (wRVUs) measure the physician work component of each CPT code — time, mental effort, technical skill, and stress — and serve as the primary metric for physician productivity measurement and compensation in employed and contracted physician models.
What is a wRVU?
The work RVU (wRVU) is the physician-work component of total RVUs — it measures only the physician's time, complexity, skill, and cognitive effort associated with a service, excluding practice expense and malpractice costs. wRVU is the most widely used physician productivity metric in healthcare management, and MGMA (Medical Group Management Association) publishes annual specialty-level wRVU benchmarks that serve as compensation and staffing reference points. Approximate MGMA median benchmarks: primary care physician ~4,500 wRVU/year, internal medicine ~4,000, general surgery ~6,000, cardiology ~8,000. Common compensation models include base salary plus a wRVU bonus (e.g., $35–50 per wRVU above a threshold) or a pure wRVU model ($45–55 per wRVU for all production). A key limitation of wRVU: it does not account for payer mix. A Medicaid visit generates the same wRVU as a Medicare or commercial visit for the same CPT code, but yields dramatically different revenue — making wRVU a poor proxy for financial productivity without payer mix context. Common wRVU analytics: wRVU per hour worked, wRVU per patient encounter, and wRVU percentile ranking against MGMA specialty peers.
Why It Matters for Healthcare Analytics
wRVU analytics inform physician compensation decisions, staffing models, scheduling optimization, and contract negotiations with health systems. A physician producing at the 25th percentile for their specialty is either under-utilized, coding conservatively, or has an unfavorable schedule — analytics distinguish among these causes. Pairing wRVU with revenue per wRVU adds the payer mix dimension that wRVU alone omits.
How Vizier Tracks wRVUs
Upload your billing data and ask "Show me wRVU production per provider this quarter, by specialty, vs. MGMA 50th percentile" — Vizier calculates wRVU totals, applies specialty benchmarks, and surfaces providers at the tails of the productivity distribution for further review.