Neuro / Peds Neuro / NIR Subspecialty Salaries

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DocMom1

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They're hard to find because they're essentially meaningless. You can find an MS guy with a huge infusion center and an MS guy unhappy in his practice because all he gets are headache referrals and so he works really slow and only sees 8 patients a day, mostly follow-ups. Is the average of these people meaningful?

You'd much rather see the RVU reimbursement $ for specific procedure and visit codes proprietary to a specialty across different regions and center types, and the average volume of RVUs generated for that specialty. Then you could make some degree of inference that would be semi-portable to your estimated situation. Ah, but a diagnostic angio might pay anywhere from $30-65 per RVU depending on the place, and even at one center, the value of that RVU might change based on your overall volume, the degree to which you collaborate across divisions and departments, your seniority in the division, etc.

And then hospitals might devalue traditionally "dense" RVU categories like critical care time, and overvalue outpatient RVUs to try to drive their faculty to see more outpatients to meet demand. And then, huge academic medical centers are going to pay less per RVU because they have huge staffs and compliance offices and people whose job is to inflate US News ratings at their hospital and someone needs to pay for them. And THEN, hospitals in the middle of Wyoming are going to pay extra enticement money on top of RVUs to retain people who add value to their operation through additional referrals, improved community stature, etc.

So, like many questions that seem straightforward, the reason you can't find a satisfactory answer to your question is that averages are pretty meaningless, the standard deviations are very high, and the numbers you really want to see (RVUs) tend to vary quite a bit depending on obvious but also obscure factors.

So yeah, NIR > NCC > MS > Gen Neuro > Peds Neuro, but there is huge overlap between groups, such that you'll find peds neurologists who make more than some MS specialists, and some MS specialists who make more than some NCC docs.
 
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The ballpark data you seek is readily available on various websites as well as previous postings in this forum.
But what is the point of having such data now when things will certainly change by the time you are out practicing.
Better focus on where your interest is the strongest since the pay rate will swing back and forth while your love or lack thereof the specialty you chose will not change.
 
"A few data points are better than none" is a fallacy for the reasons I've outlined above. Garbage in, garbage out.

Nevertheless, good luck to you. Perhaps some will share. I certainly would never go about sharing the contents of good-faith negotiations between myself and my current employer, much of which was centered around negotiated resources that in many cases traded-off for salary support -- things like laboratory benches, equipment, research coordinators, administrative support, % protected time -- all of which was negotiated separately from my RVU-based salary but without which my buildup would be completely meaningless to share.

If a bunch of academic MS docs from Columbia and UCSF shared their salary data with no context, do you think it would be a good idea to make decisions on your specialty of choice based on that extremely biased information? It's fine to factor money into your decision process, but the general gist I gave in my prior message is probably all you're going to get unless you corner your department chief and ask her/him what the standard buildups look like across multiple subspecialties. And even then you're only looking at academic salaries from one institution.

I'm a neurointensivist, and I only have a vague idea of what my colleagues make at other institutions. I know it's probably more than me, but that's a conscious choice on my part to do what I do.
 
Fine.

NIR 250K-1M+
ICU 160K-800K+
MS 150K-400K+
Gen neuro 150K-400K+
Peds Neuro 125K-300K+

Now go forth and project on QuickBooks!

By the way, other professions are different because there are "positions" people are hired into, and these positions tend to have salary guidelines with bonus structures. Most physician salary buildups are a combination of hard money (if you're lucky) and soft sources, like RVU generation and grant money (if you're lucky). It's more like being an independent contractor.
 
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