Nearly 800,000 strokes occur each year in the US alone.¹ So it should come as little surprise that stroke medicine has become one of the most in-demand subspecialties within neurology, with a concerted focus across the industry on programmatic growth and care advancements to meet this rising demand.
- The country now has over 2,400 certified stroke centers, with 44% of emergency departments designated as stroke centers, ensuring rapid access to life-saving interventions.
- Specialized services now offer cutting-edge, hyperacute care, rehabilitation, and preventive treatments.
Despite these advancements, rising demand for stroke medicine specialists among an aging population still outpaces supply, which has driven up compensation in many markets across the country. The American Academy of Neurologists has predicted a shortage of approximately 18,000 neurology physicians by 2025.
Compensation Trends
To help neurology service line and department leadership and medical group leaders develop competitive yet sustainable recruitment packages, we have compiled key data trends and insights related to stroke medicine compensation.
Given the intense competition for recruiting and retaining neurology subspecialists, it is essential for organizations to understand the nuances of stroke medicine and the key differences between stroke and general neurologists when designing compensation plans and evaluating market benchmarks.
The charts below summarize data from ECG’s 2024 Physician and APP Compensation and Production Survey.
Neurology Stroke Medicine Characteristics
Here’s what this data tells us:
- Currently, stroke medicine specialists earn a 21% compensation premium over general neurologists, despite having lower productivity expectations.
- This gap has widened rapidly over the past two years—compensation for stroke specialists is growing at twice the rate of general neurologists despite declining levels of production. This indicates that compensation is responding to subspecialty shortages and growing care complexity (rather than simply reflecting growing production or professional collections).
- In fact, stroke-related WRVU production dropped by 15% year over year, while general neurology saw a 3% increase. This trend likely reflects the rising demand for stroke specialists amid technological advancements and improved preventive care, which stems from two distinct factors.
- First, stroke coverage is needed to maintain most levels of trauma status across states, which is pushing compensation toward presence and availability and away from production.
- Second, more sophisticated care pathways have resulted in more multispecialty care models and longer slot durations within clinics for stroke patients. This also drives down WRVU production relative to FTE and underscores the critical need for specialized expertise.
- However, despite less total risk being tied to productivity, organizations are increasingly incorporating variable metrics—typically a combination of productivity, quality, and outcomes—as stroke medicine specialists become a more costly resource.
These benchmarks and insights are intended as a reference, but any compensation plan must consider key factors such as provider deployment, call burden, and local market dynamics. While no quick fix exists for closing the provider supply-and-demand gap, the evolving compensation landscape highlights the need for well-structured agreements that reflect the unique demands of stroke medicine, ensuring both fair compensation and optimal care delivery.
Nexus in Neurology: A Look at Provider Supply and Compensation
Edited by Emily Johnson
¹ Notably, the stroke death rate decreased from 41.1 per 100,000 in 2021 to 39.5 per 100,000 in 2022 (CDC 2024).
Published December 5, 2024
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