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Anyone have access to it and/or care to share?😀
2010 MGMA Salary Data
- Thread starter anencephalic
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Holy crap, I knew I was underpaid, but now I really feel terrible. It's made worse knowing the academic place where I work is low-paying in academics. Will continue to drive Honda from residency forever. Sigh...
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I spoke to several 30s to 40s something pathologists at a recent conference teasing out of them what their salary was...100% of those in my informal survey were below the 254K 25th percentile level for AP/CP....
I knew they were underpaid, but it seems the newer staff is outright getting pimped!
sad.
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Those numbers are BS.
There's no way the avg pathologist makes 377k.
There's no way the avg pathologist makes 377k.
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Totally agree. 377k? No f'ing way, at least from what I've heard. It's hard enough getting a job nowadays, let alone one for 377k.
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Even if you include the value of health insurance and malpractice insurance? Also, the average pathologist is pretty old, by all reports, so it doesn't surprise me that the average income is fairly high.
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A more difficult question than it may appear. Pay rises less in academic setting as seniority increases (chairperson different story). Large pay difference between employee and partner in private group. Corporate jobs usually very high volume, big skim for the man/shareholders.
But that's the past. New developments such as ACO's will likely continue to change things. And of course, the elephants in the room, supply and demand.
D
deleted314957
amazing! we did far more than that 15-20 years ago as pp partners. if those numbers are true ( and i always discount them because i would "poor mouth" if asked myself) then the generation behind us is getting screwed.
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Well yeah I think that 10 years ago 750k was a reasonable salary to expect for a newly minted pp partner just out f residency. But with the advent of pod labs, the refusal of insurance companies to pay pccl and groups that sold their practices to ameripath (where almost 50% of the group's revenue is filtered to quest) or other entities this is now impossible.
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Well, 250K is about 80th % for starting salary according to some CAP data I saw before I started. That was where I started and now am much higher and I am 30-40.
But I think newer people are getting pimped. Happening everywhere. Even worse for lawyers, their first jobs often have a "paycheck" of $0. And if you work in business your first salary might be decent but your work hours are nearly 24/7 with an occasional 4 hour break for sleeping.
The baby boomers are doing their best to **** over the country. They are taking all the money, and when they are solidly all retired, social security will probably get expanded even more. Funny how the greatest generation has been followed by the ****tiest selfish generation.
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Am I doing it wrong? 377K as mean. Sheesh. Anyone wanna come drink heavily with me. 
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Am I doing it wrong? 377K as mean. Sheesh. Anyone wanna come drink heavily with me.
What kind of practice are you in? Kaiser type? Owned by quest? VA? Partner owned small group? does your group have an outpatient lab and are you able to share in profits from it?
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Well that isn't true with everybody. There are like two classes of fellows. The good ones have groups peeing over themselves to hire, to be honest. Our group just tried to hire someone. We got maybe 40-50 applicants and 80% were not impressive at all. Most were IMGs but not all. Of the other 20%, there were maybe 5 that we serously considered hiring. The others were servicable but had issues of some sort, most of them were already in practice. It was hard to find a really good candidate. Some of that might have been our timing but I don't think so.
I don't think I would take the "total # of applications" to lend great credence to the "job market sucks" meme. I think these same 30-40 mediocre applicants are applying to every job they can find in the hopes someone bites. It is unfortunate that some quality people get caught up in this. What needs to happen is that residency programs need to stop graduating these people.
Pathology is a great career. I love my job. It is rewarding in many ways. I wouldn't discourage any great student from entering the field. However, I would encourage them to work hard to distinguish themselves (NOTE: This does not mean being a dick or ******* and screwing other people over). Our group has gotten applications from people who have what appear to be stellar CVs. But we know a lot of people and pretty quickly we find out that these people are *******s and we don't even consider them no matter how "talented" they are. Having a major ******* in your group can be a massive problem.
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Agree that good candidates may be difficult to find in the overall scheme of things, but the five fellows I am watching job hunt are all very good. The few groups I know that have hired recently have been inundated with applications, and yes 80% of the candidate pool is not optimal. But in that remaining 20%, there's some fierce competition. I do not get the impression that groups are all trying to hire the same stellar person. It's more like they have so many options they don't know whom to choose among the 3-5 strong candidates.
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Okay here is what I think.
Step 1.) Bid for numerous contracts for pathology services in run down areas
Step 2.) Hire 5 newly minted scopezombies errr academically trained double fellowship newly minted pathologists!
Step 3.) Pay 180K for 48wks/year M-F.
Step 4.) Bask in the showering love of their endless appreciation of being now employed (and apparently hire a clean lady to clean up all the pee if what cjw0918 says is true)
Step 5.) Collect revenue, live in beach house on Maui.
that is basically my entire retirement plan.
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OMG. I almost peed reading this hahahaha. I can guarantee there is no single pathologist looking for work I would pee myself over.
The only pathologist worthy of a pee might be one so awesome he/she actually brings in business far excess of their salary, which I have never heard of. Ever. Anywhere.
Most groups are not looking for anyone and when I say most, I mean pretty much every single Pathology group I know...
it is far more common for a down on its luck Pathology group looking for business/contracts, than for a group looking for Pathologists...
now this is Private practice mind you, there are plenty of HMOs, Academics, Big Biz like Quest looking for newly minted types and willing to underpay you in the name of Capitalism.
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80% of people applying are not good candidates?
what's the definition of a good candidate? how many papers they wrote?
[
QUOTE=lipomas;11895390]Well that isn't true with everybody. There are like two classes of fellows. The good ones have groups peeing over themselves to hire, to be honest. Our group just tried to hire someone. We got maybe 40-50 applicants and 80% were not impressive at all. Most were IMGs but not all. Of the other 20%, there were maybe 5 that we serously considered hiring. The others were servicable but had issues of some sort, most of them were already in practice. It was hard to find a really good candidate. Some of that might have been our timing but I don't think so.
I don't think I would take the "total # of applications" to lend great credence to the "job market sucks" meme. I think these same 30-40 mediocre applicants are applying to every job they can find in the hopes someone bites. It is unfortunate that some quality people get caught up in this. What needs to happen is that residency programs need to stop graduating these people.
Pathology is a great career. I love my job. It is rewarding in many ways. I wouldn't discourage any great student from entering the field. However, I would encourage them to work hard to distinguish themselves (NOTE: This does not mean being a dick or ******* and screwing other people over). Our group has gotten applications from people who have what appear to be stellar CVs. But we know a lot of people and pretty quickly we find out that these people are *******s and we don't even consider them no matter how "talented" they are. Having a major ******* in your group can be a massive problem.[/QUOTE]
what's the definition of a good candidate? how many papers they wrote?
[
QUOTE=lipomas;11895390]Well that isn't true with everybody. There are like two classes of fellows. The good ones have groups peeing over themselves to hire, to be honest. Our group just tried to hire someone. We got maybe 40-50 applicants and 80% were not impressive at all. Most were IMGs but not all. Of the other 20%, there were maybe 5 that we serously considered hiring. The others were servicable but had issues of some sort, most of them were already in practice. It was hard to find a really good candidate. Some of that might have been our timing but I don't think so.
I don't think I would take the "total # of applications" to lend great credence to the "job market sucks" meme. I think these same 30-40 mediocre applicants are applying to every job they can find in the hopes someone bites. It is unfortunate that some quality people get caught up in this. What needs to happen is that residency programs need to stop graduating these people.
Pathology is a great career. I love my job. It is rewarding in many ways. I wouldn't discourage any great student from entering the field. However, I would encourage them to work hard to distinguish themselves (NOTE: This does not mean being a dick or ******* and screwing other people over). Our group has gotten applications from people who have what appear to be stellar CVs. But we know a lot of people and pretty quickly we find out that these people are *******s and we don't even consider them no matter how "talented" they are. Having a major ******* in your group can be a massive problem.[/QUOTE]
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Yeah well speaking as part of a group that just hired 4 people in the past two years, the good candidates are hard to find. And we are a private group. So it's not really off the wall to make that statement.
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We've heard a few opinions about what makes a good candidate. Care to add yours to the mix, yaah?
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So are you admitting to peeing yourself
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Are the good candidates ones who have been in practice for 25 years and the bad ones are the current fellows looking for jobs?
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1) Good training and diagnostic skills
2) Works well with others
3) Career stability (for an experienced person, someone who hasn't changed jobs 5 times; for a new graduate, someone who knows what they want to do)
4) Someone who isn't going to bail on the group in a couple of years because they get that job they always wanted in Miami or NYC (i.e. a connection to the area or a reason they will stay for the long haul).
5) Excellent communication skills
6) Adequate business sense/understanding
7) Well rounded in training and abilities
8) Passed the boards
9) References that are strong
10) Not having lots of detractors in the pathology community (word gets around)
11) Ethical, not sleazy or driven primarily by financial rewards
12) Brings something different to the group
13) Not an *******.
14) Respected by clinicians, ancillary staff i.e. techs and secretaries, colleagues
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hiring 4 peeps in 2 years? wow. there must be more to the story.
Your group must be insanely huge (40+) with a wave of baby boomer retirements or there is mad turnover for some reason.
4 new pathologists into a group in such a short period of time sounds bonkers to me. I havent seen that occur anywhere in California (the max Ive seen is 2 in a year and that is in bigger 10+ man groups) in 10 years.
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Volume growth + retirement + one person leaving mid career to change states for family reasons + acquisition of a new lab we have to run within our hospital system. Our group is less than 20.
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Strong work. Volume growth during the post crash/recession 2008-2011 is remarkable. I think at last count, I hadnt known a single practice that accomplished this.
I hate large groups more than say 4-5 guys, but to each his own. Ive found there is no economies of scale for partnership pathologist work when you expand (ie- each additional partner with a corresponding incremental volume increase doesnt really do much for my personal bottom line aside from potential additional drama).
D
deleted314957
The only thing missing is post training wheels EXPERIENCE.
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thanks for the helpful list, yaah. i suppose the tough thing is figuring out which applicants have those traits. only so much info you can get from CV and a 6 hour interview day.
I thought it was a good list. Your point is good - ideally you would be able to fast forward to an alternate universe where you "test hired" them for a few days and just see how things go. Do they wander into your office every 15 minutes, "can I show you a slide?" and then proceed to try to direct you to the undotted single atypical cell they are worried about? Do they piss off clinicians by signing everything out late or with typos or poor format or incorrectly? Do they emit a foul odor? Do they eat lunch in their office every day and never socialize with anyone? Do they still call RCC "hypernephroma?"
Competence is such a hard thing to gauge. It helps if you have a colleague who has worked with them who can be honest with you. Ultimately though you have to take chances on people. That's why a lot of private groups want experience. But to me experience is only really relevant for the first year or so of the job - after that they are likely to be equivalent. So are you hiring for the first year? Or are you hiring long term?
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Our group has hired (and unfortunately, fired) quite a few pathologists in the 12 years I've been here. In general, the only ones that work out are the people that we personally know from training, or are recommended by the mentors that trained us. I can't remember the last time we had success with someone from outside of that circle. There are a lot of bad pathologists out there, some with serious personal and/or professional problems.
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Ive often thought that Pathologists were hired and fired with far greater regularity than any other type of physician (I have anecdotal evidence but no real data to support this).
This is due to the fact that Pathologists dont have any cred with patients (and even other M.D.s) and thus when fired are never at risk of taking any business away from you (unlike say a very popular Surgeon or Internist). Firing Pathologists is always a risk-free decision.
My guess is that the a vast majority of the pathologists you've fired have been FMGs with more cultural and communication issues than true intellectual ones. Am I right?
This really an artifact of "Pathology groups functioning as Syndicates" because due to closed contracts, they have a de facto monopoly on the speciality within the hospital as well as the area.
Let me expand:
You cant come to a town and hang up a shingle as a Pathologist, you engage the local group and seek an audience. The Syndicate will always seek to maintain the heirarchy and status quo and often does this by CREATING the high turnover on purpose. The high turnover leads to a sense of instability among junior Syndicate members and thus decreases their willingness to rebel against the status quo.
This is essentially direct Social Control Theory in action. I put its origin in American Pathology somewhere in the 1970s.
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That's a great description and insight. The culture is necessitated by the exclusive contract. You couldn't have multiple groups covering a hospital the way you do hospitLists or gi docs or orthos etc. You could but it would be chaos as the lab needs stability.
I remember dr remrick writing that exclusive contracts for pathology and radiology will have to be done away with for ACOs to function properly. I really don't see how that would be possible without increasing chaos.
I remember dr remrick writing that exclusive contracts for pathology and radiology will have to be done away with for ACOs to function properly. I really don't see how that would be possible without increasing chaos.
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ACOs will definitely not do away with closed contracts. Quite the opposite, they threaten to create Mega-Syndicates that involve massive geographic areas.
The blood letting amongst Pathology groups when ACOs begin to coalesce in substantial numbers will be legendary. Think Gangs of New York, Braveheart and 300 all rolled into one epic battle for regional supremacy.
There will be no mercy shown, no quarter given.
The blood letting amongst Pathology groups when ACOs begin to coalesce in substantial numbers will be legendary. Think Gangs of New York, Braveheart and 300 all rolled into one epic battle for regional supremacy.
There will be no mercy shown, no quarter given.
