Do you believe that TH pays similar to SDGs? If you do you have been brainwashed. I wont come on here and tell you what I make. but.. look at the stern salary survey. Oh an I can tell you if TH pays you $200/hr or the most I heard for a CMG at a steady rate is $235/hr. I know guys at groups here in town where the non-partner CMG pay is in the 160-200 range. Every group I know the partners are making a minimum of 25% more with benefits.
That is very hard to say as many groups pay bonuses that account for large portion of income. When you break these down over the year by hour it's a crap ton more than any CMG offer I have entertained, aside from TH's west region "special ops" rate
We clearly have had different experiences. I doubt either of us are brainwashed, but objective data is the only way to really answer this. This question of CMG vs SDG pay is very important to me as I was told I'd be giving up tons of money if I went with the CMGs. So I've spent a lot of time looking at it with objective data.
Ectopic, you and trumpet both gave the typical response, which is CMG pay a "crap ton" less. Sounds like you've based that on your experience. I think that's fair. But, I've looked at 4 offers from SDGs and each of them had pay +/- 5 dollars/hr from my lowest paying CMG job. The funny thing is, each of them said "you'll make tons more as a partner here than with any CMG." My experience is different than yours or theirs. Maybe rather than say that all SDGs pay way more than CMGs, we should just say that some pay more than others.
I do pay close attention to the Stern survey. For this year the 10th percentile was $120/hr (240k/yr) and 90th was $240/hr (500k/yr). The 50th percentile was $185/hr (313k/yr) for SDG partners and $200/hr (352k/yr) for CMG independent contractors. In other words Ectopic, the objective data from Sterns isn't consistent with your experience. The CMG folks made MORE than the SDG partners. Of course, after you count benefits they're possibly equal to less, but not by tons. I can tell you that I've never made less than the 50th percentile and am above the 75th percentile. I'm not a traveler and don't have admin duties.
Are you saying that the SDG guys in your group make 25% more than $235 an hour and get benefits? That would be $280 an hour plus benefits. Sounds awesome.
Trumpet, I don't think this question is that hard to answer. Anybody who has looked at a IC job vs Employee (of SDG or Hospital) has had to do this calculation. You just have to add up all the benefits (including average partner bonus) to your expected other pay per year and divide by your expected hours. You then have apples and apples. Dental and Health insurance isn't hard to estimate, go to ehealthinsurance.com and they give you a quote. Everything else usually has an easily defined value (401k, CME, etc).
The very best way to answer this (ie the question of overhead) is to look at your groups $/RVU collected and then look at what you make per RVU. The difference would be the overhead. Every group is essentially compensated solely on RVU's collected (unless there's a stipend). I have yet to met a SDG person who has these numbers despite being in an "open book" group. It'd be the best way to answer this question. I couldn't tell you my groups $/RVU collected bc no CMG would ever tell me this. But, if I knew a similar groups $/RVU I could probably estimate whether CMGs are making a ton of money from me or not.
I've looked up the profits from some of these publicly traded companies and divided by the number of physicians to get a rough idea of profit. The numbers I got were between 5k-30k per physician per year. This is just the profit, so the overhead is higher (VPs, parties, recruitment). That's definitely more of my check than I'd like to give up but I suspect half of that is money they've made by economy of scale that's not available to SDGs (cheaper malpractice insurance, better billing capture, etc). Most of them also have PAs, anesthesia, hospitalist and urgent care docs they're profiting from that make up some of this number. Maybe this is just something I tell myself to feel better. But if it's true, and they're making an extra 2.5k-15k off me and I have little responsibility to them and no sweat or financial buy in - that seems pretty fair.
If I'm presenting a BS argument and being brainwashed, please tell me. I definitely want to know (no sarcasm meant here at all). People are able to rationalize all kinds of things. I don't think I'm doing so. I will say I've paid closer attention to this thread than most others in my 14 years lurking here. I don't know if I have a chip on my shoulder about it, or was just so surprised to find out something I took as fact wasn't true. I don't care strongly about how much I make but I definitely care if what I'm making is fair compared to my peers. As hard as we've worked, the last thing I want is to let someone not seeing patients siphon off my earnings.
we can all contact our billing co, who's rep we know as a friend pretty much, and get any metric we ask for on demand. 
