How East Alabama Health Cut a Week of Physician Compensation Work Down to Half a Day

The Challenge

Marty Leadbetter is the assistant vice president for the medical group at East Alabama Health, where he’s spent more than 40 years in healthcare leadership.  

During that time, he’s seen the medical group and its physician compensation models and pay arrangements grow in complexity. The organization’s plans now cover 170 physicians and clinicians across several compensation models, along with medical directorships, graduate medical education payments, stipends, and recruitment loans. 

As the organization’s physician compensation workload increased, Marty realized the process had become too much for one person to manage. Every calculation lived inside massive Excel spreadsheets fed by data from at least five separate systems. Some of the files were so large that Marty even had to add more RAM to his computer just to keep Excel from locking up. Asked how many spreadsheets and workarounds were involved, he said, “Gosh, you don’t have enough fingers and toes to figure that out.”

The workflow was functional, but it was completely manual from start to finish. Physicians submitted paper time logs, which a clerk entered into Excel for leadership to review. The data was then entered again into a separate bonus system and went through at least two levels of approval, ending with the CFO.

At least one week of validation down to about half a day + almost zero physician complaints

At least 20 people touched a single payment, and the entire process took about three weeks from submission to payout. Monthly stipends and medical directorships alone took at least two full days to process, while quarterly payments required four to five days of collecting, calculating, and validating data, followed by at least two more days of approvals.

In addition to their size, the spreadsheets had other limitations. They couldn’t apply the coding modifier adjustments for multiple procedures, so productivity credit wasn’t always calculated as precisely as Marty wanted, and they sometimes required corrections after payments had already been made. With only a two-day payroll window, those constraints made it difficult to meet every deadline. Physicians also had little visibility into how their pay was calculated. Whenever one asked for details, Marty had to build an individual report by hand. 

The Solution

Marty got his first taste of automation when East Alabama began using MDComp, a SaaS-based work relative value unit (wRVU) calculator and dashboard tool that Ludi later acquired.  

He engaged Ludi for physician compensation automation, seeking:  

• More structure so he didn’t have to work through every calculation by hand.
• Increased visibility so physicians could see how their compensation was calculated.
• A knowledgeable third-party partner who could provide an additional layer of oversight.

East Alabama went live with Ludi’s time tracking in April 2026 and added productivity pay in July. Ludi’s team worked closely with Marty to guide him through the implementation, providing support through weekly calls and quick responses whenever questions came up. “Any time we’ve ever thrown Ludi a curveball, they’ve caught it, figured it out, and made it happen,” he said.

The Results

Marty noticed a difference right away, almost immediately. “I could breathe,” he said. “Once Ludi was live, it literally took a lot of the pressure off of me, because I’m pretty much the individual who, at the end of the day, has to get physician compensation right.”

1. A Week of Work Down to Half a Day

At fiscal year-end close, Marty spent about half a day validating physician payments, compared with at least a full week under the old process. The CFO then signs off in a single approval step. 

The extra bandwidth lets Marty and his colleagues focus on proactive planning for the new fiscal year. 

Because physicians can now view their own pay details in Ludi, Marty also has more time to step away from his desk and connect with providers in person, including new recruits.

If a peer at another hospital was considering Ludi, I feel confident I can reassure them that their troubles will go away really fast. I don’t think they’ll ever find anything like the implementation we had with Ludi.

Marty Leadbetter
Assistant V.P. for the medical group, East Alabama Health

2. A Faster, More Reliable Payroll Process

Marty can now hand payroll a single file, removing the bottleneck that used to cause missed deadlines in a two-day window. Physicians also have more confidence their incentive payments will arrive on time. “Now, it’s just easy-peasy,” Marty said. 

Other designated staff members can also log in and review physician pay, reducing the risk of having one person handle the entire process.

3. Physicians Can See Exactly How They’re Paid

Physicians who once filled out paper logs now submit their time digitally, and Marty reports almost zero complaints. They can see their wRVU details day by day and track trends over time, while Marty fields fewer questions about pay. “Before, I couldn’t give them that detail,” he said. “Now it’s just face up for them.”

4. Accurate Productivity Credit

The Ludi platform automatically applies modifier adjustments and accounts for physicians who are paid on different CMS fee schedule years. “I can say this person’s on 2020, this person’s on 2023, this person’s on 2026,” Marty said. “And it just knows.”

5. Contracts and Governance in One Place

Ludi houses East Alabama’s physician contracts and tracks renewal timelines, supporting the medical group’s governance and internal reviews. Marty no longer has to search through different sources to find the information he needs. “It’s all centrally located,” he said.