Work RVUs by Specialty: Medicare wRVU Data for Every Specialty and State
How many Medicare work RVUs does a typical clinician generate in each specialty? Median, middle half and top 10% for 86 specialties, state maps and the codes behind them.
Work RVUs by specialty vary more than tenfold. Using every Medicare fee-for-service service billed in 2023 and the CMS work RVU for each code, we calculated how many Medicare work RVUs each clinician generated in a year, then summarized them by specialty and state. The result is the only free, specialty-by-specialty view of Medicare wRVU volume we know of.
Medicare work RVUs per clinician, by specialty
The table shows the median clinician (half generated more, half less), the middle half (25th to 75th percentile) and the level reached by the top 10%. Select a specialty to see its full profile.
Medicare work RVUs per clinician in a year, by specialty (2023)
Source: contact.doctor analysis of CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners by Provider and Service (2023) and the CMS Physician Fee Schedule relative value file (2023). Medicare fee-for-service services only, for clinicians with at least 100 Medicare work RVUs; CMS leaves out services given to fewer than 11 patients. Not a measure of total workload: most clinicians also see patients with other insurance.
Important: these are Medicare-only RVUs
These figures count only services to people with traditional Medicare, which for most clinicians is a minority of their patients. That is why pediatrics and obstetrics look low (few Medicare patients) and why ophthalmology, cardiology and dermatology, which treat many older adults, look high. Commercial benchmarks published by MGMA, AMGA and others count all payers and are much higher; use our numbers to compare specialties and states with each other, not as a target for your contract.
Maps: how much work RVUs vary by state
Within a specialty, the median clinician’s Medicare workload differs a lot from state to state, depending on how old the population is, how many clinicians share the work, and local practice patterns. Family medicine:
Source: contact.doctor analysis of CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners by Provider and Service (2023) and the CMS Physician Fee Schedule relative value file (2023). Medicare fee-for-service services only, for clinicians with at least 100 Medicare work RVUs; CMS leaves out services given to fewer than 11 patients. Not a measure of total workload: most clinicians also see patients with other insurance. States with fewer than 20 clinicians in the specialty are not shown.
Source: contact.doctor analysis of CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners by Provider and Service (2023) and the CMS Physician Fee Schedule relative value file (2023). Medicare fee-for-service services only, for clinicians with at least 100 Medicare work RVUs; CMS leaves out services given to fewer than 11 patients. Not a measure of total workload: most clinicians also see patients with other insurance. States with fewer than 20 clinicians in the specialty are not shown.
Where the work RVUs come from
Most primary care RVUs come from a handful of office visit codes. In family medicine, moderate-complexity established-patient visits alone produce over a third of Medicare work RVUs:
Where Family Medicine Medicare work RVUs come from (2023)
Code and service
Work RVU each
Times billed
Share of work RVUs
99214 Office o/p est mod 30-39 min
1.92
15,221,319
37.7%
99213 Office o/p est low 20-29 min
1.30
7,987,692
13.4%
G0439 Ppps, subseq visit
1.92
3,997,001
9.9%
99215 Office o/p est hi 40-54 min
2.80
1,032,273
3.7%
99232 Sbsq hosp ip/obs moderate 35
1.59
1,801,566
3.7%
99233 Sbsq hosp ip/obs high 50
2.40
1,040,530
3.2%
99309 Sbsq nf care moderate mdm 30
1.92
1,156,188
2.9%
99223 1st hosp ip/obs high 75
3.50
464,328
2.1%
99308 Sbsq nf care low mdm 15
1.30
1,032,966
1.7%
99490 Chrnc care mgmt staff 1st 20
1.00
1,331,017
1.7%
Source: contact.doctor analysis of CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners by Provider and Service (2023) and the CMS Physician Fee Schedule relative value file (2023). Medicare fee-for-service services only, for clinicians with at least 100 Medicare work RVUs; CMS leaves out services given to fewer than 11 patients. Not a measure of total workload: most clinicians also see patients with other insurance. CPT codes and descriptions are copyright American Medical Association.
Procedural specialties look very different. In orthopedic surgery, joint replacements and fracture repairs dominate:
Where Orthopedic Surgery Medicare work RVUs come from (2023)
Code and service
Work RVU each
Times billed
Share of work RVUs
27447 Total knee arthroplasty
19.60
228,223
17.3%
99214 Office o/p est mod 30-39 min
1.92
1,870,381
13.9%
99213 Office o/p est low 20-29 min
1.30
2,699,538
13.6%
27130 Total hip arthroplasty
19.60
121,795
9.2%
99204 Office o/p new mod 45-59 min
2.60
605,311
6.1%
20610 Drain/inj joint/bursa w/o us
0.79
1,700,383
5.2%
99203 Office o/p new low 30-44 min
1.60
613,905
3.8%
23472 Reconstruct shoulder joint
22.13
42,918
3.7%
Source: contact.doctor analysis of CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners by Provider and Service (2023) and the CMS Physician Fee Schedule relative value file (2023). Medicare fee-for-service services only, for clinicians with at least 100 Medicare work RVUs; CMS leaves out services given to fewer than 11 patients. Not a measure of total workload: most clinicians also see patients with other insurance. CPT codes and descriptions are copyright American Medical Association.
How to use this data
Job seekers: compare a state’s median with the national figure to see how busy Medicare practice tends to be there. Pair it with our doctors per capita map and shortage areas to judge demand.
Source: CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners by Provider and Service (2023) and the CMS Physician Fee Schedule national relative value file (January 2023). For each clinician we summed services × work RVU over all base codes (without modifiers) and kept clinicians with at least 100 Medicare work RVUs, grouped by the primary specialty in the NPI Registry. CMS does not publish a code for a clinician when fewer than 11 patients received it, so totals are slight undercounts. Details in our methodology; RVU basics in what are RVUs.
