For physicians · residents · fellows
wRVU rates by specialty — and what your formula is actually worth
The rate is one number. Your pay is three: rate, threshold, and base.
Median $/wRVU by specialty below, from published sources.
Then run the arithmetic on your own contract — free.
Two contracts with identical bases can differ by tens of thousands of dollars a year purely on productivity mechanics. The math is simple once the numbers are explicit: pay above threshold = rate × (your wRVUs − threshold). At a $50 rate, every 500 wRVUs past the threshold is $25,000; a $5/wRVU difference in rate is worth more than a $10,000 base difference for most full-time producers.
The traps are rarely the rate itself: an unlocked CMS fee-schedule year lets the threshold drift upward, and vague counting rules (billed vs. personally performed) quietly shrink your credited wRVUs. The decode extracts your rate, threshold, and the fine print — with the contract quotes to prove it.
| Specialty | Median $/wRVU | Per 500 wRVUs above threshold |
|---|
60 seconds. Free. The second opinion most attendings wish they'd gotten.
Decode my contract — freeThe $99 full report adds clause-by-clause analysis, counter-proposal language, and a ready-to-send negotiation email — a fraction of the $500–$2,000 a typical attorney review costs, and a good way to arrive prepared if you hire one.
How this comparison was built
- • joboffer.ink is built with care by children of physicians — Harvard- and MIT-trained engineers.
- • Every number traces to a named public source — 26 registered sources, 106 lineage-linked values across 20 specialties.
- • Covenant and tail-coverage norms are cross-checked against a corpus of 65 physician employment lawsuits (2021–2026) built from court records.
- • No licensed survey data is resold here: everything cited is public, with links, and the full method is documented on the methodology page.
Harvard and MIT do not endorse or have any affiliation with joboffer.ink; the reference describes the founders' training.
Full methodology & sources →Frequently asked questions
What is a good wRVU conversion rate?
One at or above the published median for your specialty — but only alongside a reasonable threshold. A above-median rate above an unreachable threshold pays nothing. Judge the pair (and whether the values are locked to a named CMS year), not the rate alone.
How do I calculate my productivity pay?
Rate × (annual wRVUs − threshold), if positive. Ask the employer for last year's median annual wRVUs for a full-time physician in the role — that single number turns the formula into an expected dollar figure and is a completely normal thing to request.
Why does the CMS fee-schedule year matter?
wRVU values per CPT code change when CMS updates the fee schedule. If your contract doesn't pin a year, a future update can raise your effective threshold or shrink your credited work without anyone renegotiating anything. Ask for the values to be locked to a named year.
Keep reading
Information and preparation, not legal advice. Benchmarks cite public sources inline; verify every number against your own documents.