In a previous article (¹), the authors described a faculty practice plan that assigned a monetary value to various educational and research activities and provided data on the research and publication productivity by the faculty over a 4-year period from June 30, 1999, to June 30, 2003. This article is intended to provide a brief progress report on the effectiveness of the plan to stimulate research and scholarly activities, focusing on the 4-year period from July 1, 2003, to June 30, 2007. The authors will also summarize changes made to the plan since the original paper was published.

All faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine (UC Davis) are charged an academic assessment of 16% of the value of their total compensation and benefits package. The funds generated from this assessment are then pooled and redistributed back to faculty as credits for departmental administrative responsibilities, teaching, scholarship, community service, and research grants. These credits are based on either faculty members’ total compensation and benefits (for administrative responsibilities) or on their base salary (for teaching responsibilities, scholarship, community service, and grants received). For the July 1, 2006—June 30, 2007, academic year, $1,174,987 was collected in academic assessments from faculty and $1,452,975 was paid out to faculty. The percentage of categories supported was as follows: 50% administrative duties, 22% teaching, 13% publications, 9% research, and 6% community service.

With the increase in faculty salaries over the past 8 years since the plan was enacted, the value of the credits increased considerably but the amount of funds collected continued to be less than what was paid out. For instance, in 1999, the mean salary for an assistant professor was approximately $100,000. In 2006, the mean salary for an assistant professor had increased to approximately $140,000. Consequently, the value of the percentage credit allocated to perform various activities had also increased considerably.

The increase in numbers of faculty from 35 in June 30, 1999, to 41 as of June 30, 2007, and the success of faculty in receiving grant support required an increase in the number of departmental staff needed to provide support to faculty and their research staffs. It also resulted in increased operating costs for the department. Over the 4 years since the original paper was published in Academic Psychiatry (¹), several new administrative positions were added to support a growing number of residents, which had increased from 37 on June 30, 2003, to 44 on June 30, 2007. Psychiatry faculty also became more involved in additional teaching and academic responsibilities, and they were writing more and participating in more community service activities. In addition to this, new positions were added in the department which received academic credits. These included a vice chair for faculty development, a training director for a new internal medicine-psychiatry training program and a training director for the family medicine-psychiatry training program. For all these reasons, the department’s executive committee reviewed all the academic credits and recommended the changes noted in Table 1 and Table 2, all of which were endorsed by the faculty.

With regard to the effectiveness of the plan, the total number of grants and the total dollar value of grants have continued to increase, as have the number of peer-reviewed publications (Table 3). The number of faculty members has increased over the last 4 years, as have the grant funding per faculty member and publications per faculty. The average age of all faculty increased only 4.1 years over this 8-year period, from 44.7 to 48.8 years old. In addition, the average number of years faculty were members of the department increased only 2.3 years during this 8-year period, from 3.5 to 5.8 years. Hence the additional research and publications could not be entirely explained by a larger number of faculty, or a more senior or a more experienced faculty base. Only 14 of the original 35 faculty members in 1999 remained as members of the department until 2007. In other words, 66% of the 2007 faculty were recruited during the 8-year period between 1999 and 2007. This 8-year finding is consistent with the differences between the time period (8 years), the age increases (4.1 years), and the increase in years as a faculty member (2.3 years).

Although Table 3 focuses on the increased number of grants and publications, another major goal, which is less quantifiable and is shown in Table 1 and Table 2, is to promote faculty development in teaching and education. Various authors have published innovative reports on incentivizing educational or research productivity. Stites and colleagues (²) reported on a new metric for distributing university funds to support faculty efforts in education by designing and implementing an educational value unit system that placed a dollar value on core teaching functions. This system has achieved similar goals as our plan has intended. Emery and Gregory (³) surveyed academic orthopedic surgery departments to determine how chairs reward academic productivity and found that most programs used the chair’s discretion and only a few had developed point systems, which varied considerably. A major reason for the faculty practice plan described in this article was to ensure that the chair would objectively reward faculty for performance. In a more comprehensive review, Mallon and Jones (⁴) identified 41 medical school or medical school departments that used metric systems to quantify faculty productivity in teaching and analyzed the goals of these systems. The major reason for developing such systems was to develop a rational system for distributing funds. Systems varied between those that used a relative-value unit method of teaching, similar to the one described by Stites and colleagues (²), and those that used a contact-hour method, a system which we used.

Rewarding research productivity is even more challenging since it may discourage mentorship and university and public service (⁵). We have attempted to address these concerns by crediting such activities in a manner similar to teaching responsibilities.

Since the publication of our original article in 2005, other authors have reported on incentive plans that have much merit (⁶). Other needs, in addition to time, space, and money are required, with a solid educational infrastructure being an important prerequisite (⁷). Finally, this article addresses only the quantifiable aspects of the compensation plan. Having chairs as role models, instituting faculty development programs, elevating the status of teaching through academies, and establishing teaching awards for faculty are also examples of important incentives that should be considered (⁸).

A major limitation of our practice plan and others is the difficulty in evaluating the quality of various activities. For example, in publications, should increased credit be given to those papers published in top tier journals or should papers that have a higher citation index receive additional credit? Similarly, faculty members are rewarded for the quantity of teaching or supervision, but a quality factor is not applied. Previous attempts to apply quality modifiers to teaching or publication activities have not been effective because it has been difficult to adopt an objective rating system (⁹).

The faculty practice plan has now been in existence for 9 years. Faculty members have become more knowledgeable about the goals and details of the plan and have also made a number of constructive changes to the plan. Equally important, the way faculty are compensated and rewarded for their work has become more understandable, quantifiable, objective, and equitable. With many faculty members having at least several years’ experience with the plan, they have also become more aware of the benefits and restrictions of the plan. They generally feel that their administrative, teaching, scholarship, research, and community service activities are being recognized and rewarded in a fair and tangible manner. In conclusion, a practice plan can be successful if it receives the faculty’s complete support and belief in its fairness and objectivity.

At the time of submission, the authors disclosed no competing interests.