The use of relative value units to measure the productivity of nurse clinicians in four primary care practices is described. Relative value points and equivalent dollar values assigned to services provided by professionals yielded a different assessment of productivity than that provided by a count of patient visits. The physician-nurse clinician teams studied were only 6 percent more productive than the physician-nurse teams when productivity was measured by the number of patient visits processed during an 8-hour period but were 26 percent more productive in terms of the value of services they produced per day.
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