APMA Salary Survey
Started by Adam Smasher
Narc
Also, most importantly, who won the $500 gift card??? If I won I was going to celebrate at Outback Steakhouse
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Yup.
Will produce podiatrists who don’t have the luxury of turning down bad job offers.
Will produce podiatrists who don’t have the luxury of turning down unpaid call.
For the record, APMA has absolutely nothing to do with a school applying for a podiatry college, determining whether they have the capability to teach the curriculum, or whether they get approved.
That role falls on CPME. Unfortunately, CPME doesn’t do a market assessment to determine if we need a new school (or two). It’s just not in their purview. That said, the market will ultimately dictate the success of individual colleges.
The DO’s are having the exact same problem right now. They are approving and opening schools faster than they should (per DO leadership) and the quality of their applications are slipping. And, they will struggle to have residency programs for all these students in the near future.
“AACOM reports 8,805 first-year DO students in 2019–20 versus about 11,686 in 2025–26. That is an increase of 2,881 entering students per year — 32.7% growth in only six years.”
Podiatry is unique - we open more schools but don’t have increased enrollments….🤷♂️
That role falls on CPME. Unfortunately, CPME doesn’t do a market assessment to determine if we need a new school (or two). It’s just not in their purview. That said, the market will ultimately dictate the success of individual colleges.
The DO’s are having the exact same problem right now. They are approving and opening schools faster than they should (per DO leadership) and the quality of their applications are slipping. And, they will struggle to have residency programs for all these students in the near future.
“AACOM reports 8,805 first-year DO students in 2019–20 versus about 11,686 in 2025–26. That is an increase of 2,881 entering students per year — 32.7% growth in only six years.”
Podiatry is unique - we open more schools but don’t have increased enrollments….🤷♂️
I actually think your statement that “the market will ultimately dictate the success of individual colleges” gets directly to what I'm asking.
Isn't it possible that declining applications and enrollment are the market doing exactly that right now?
We have expanded the number of schools without increasing the number of students interested in attending them. Perhaps that isn't necessarily an “application crisis.” Perhaps prospective students are looking at tuition, debt, compensation, employment opportunities and alternative healthcare careers and making a rational market decision.
That's why I'm uncomfortable spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to increase applications before we've determined how many graduates the profession actually needs.
If the market is signaling that podiatry currently supports 400–450 new students per year, and we spend money on marketing specifically designed to push that number back toward 600, aren't we effectively trying to override the very market mechanism you're saying should determine which schools succeed?
Maybe 600 really is the appropriate number. I don't know. Maybe it's 500, 425 or 300. That's exactly why I've been asking for the workforce analysis.
I just think we should determine whether declining enrollment represents a workforce problem before deciding that it represents a marketing problem.
Money ! Fill seats pay bills at school and dump em
BeaverBlade
Full Member
I quit a job over unpaid call. It’s almost 2027. Any of you taking unpaid call, you’re contributing to the problem.
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Wow, nice! Within how many weeks was your former position filled by one of dozens (if PP) or hundreds (if hospital) of applications your employer received after they put up a new job ad?
BeaverBlade
Full Member
Yep the majority of the issue is the saturation always comes back to that.
I've been thinking about call a lot this year. Doing the cases isn't the annoying part, it's the follow up, because once you do the case, all the post-op drudgery is your obligation. FMLA forms, handicap placards, wound care orders. Plus complications. Nothing insurmountable, just disruptive to your workflow.
This is another example of how it all comes back to toenails. If majority of your outpatient visits are profitable MSK consultations, then it hurts you to interrupt your day with followup care. But if majority of your work is toenails, then the opportunity cost of diabetic pus work is low.
Toe Amp (assume no complications)
99222-1h out of office
28820 or 28825--1.5h out of office
99232 post op rounds--30 min out of office
2 week f/u suture removal visit 9921x and/or 11042--15 min scheduled
+FMLA forms and wound care orders--another 15 min
2 month f/u wound check 9921x--another 15 min
*toenail care/diabetic shoes don't count because you could be doing that anyway
=$400-500 for a ~4h time commitment which is likely worse than toenails. Only way it works out is if you rationalize that the out of office work isn't costing you overhead, and I'm pretty sure that's just me coping.
Ray resection/TMA (assume no complications)
99222-1h out of office
288xx--1.5-2h out of office
99024 post op rounds --30 min
2 week f/u suture removal 99024
+FMLA bs, etc
2 month f/u 99024
=somewhat better math, but higher risk for complications
When you factor in post-op complications that happen in maybe 1/4 of patients (wound dehiscence, -78 modifier surgery) it starts to get bad. But with experience you can learn to minimize complications/cherry pick pts who won't blow up on you.
So bottom line, if forced to do call (which I am, need call to keep hospital privileges, need to keep hospital privileges to stay on insurance panels), engage in weaponized incompetence where necessary, say it's too complicated for you to manage due to XYZ comorbidity, transfer to other facility that pays DPMs to do this and they contractually can't weasel out of it. But when you earn your living grinding toenails, that's your measuring stick for whether or not anything else is profitable.
This is another example of how it all comes back to toenails. If majority of your outpatient visits are profitable MSK consultations, then it hurts you to interrupt your day with followup care. But if majority of your work is toenails, then the opportunity cost of diabetic pus work is low.
Toe Amp (assume no complications)
99222-1h out of office
28820 or 28825--1.5h out of office
99232 post op rounds--30 min out of office
2 week f/u suture removal visit 9921x and/or 11042--15 min scheduled
+FMLA forms and wound care orders--another 15 min
2 month f/u wound check 9921x--another 15 min
*toenail care/diabetic shoes don't count because you could be doing that anyway
=$400-500 for a ~4h time commitment which is likely worse than toenails. Only way it works out is if you rationalize that the out of office work isn't costing you overhead, and I'm pretty sure that's just me coping.
Ray resection/TMA (assume no complications)
99222-1h out of office
288xx--1.5-2h out of office
99024 post op rounds --30 min
2 week f/u suture removal 99024
+FMLA bs, etc
2 month f/u 99024
=somewhat better math, but higher risk for complications
When you factor in post-op complications that happen in maybe 1/4 of patients (wound dehiscence, -78 modifier surgery) it starts to get bad. But with experience you can learn to minimize complications/cherry pick pts who won't blow up on you.
So bottom line, if forced to do call (which I am, need call to keep hospital privileges, need to keep hospital privileges to stay on insurance panels), engage in weaponized incompetence where necessary, say it's too complicated for you to manage due to XYZ comorbidity, transfer to other facility that pays DPMs to do this and they contractually can't weasel out of it. But when you earn your living grinding toenails, that's your measuring stick for whether or not anything else is profitable.
BeaverBlade
Full Member
So you know for a fact you wouldn’t be able to stay on insurance panels if you didn’t have hospital privileges? Is that common everywhere or location dependent?
Are dermatologists forced to be on staff at hospitals to be on insurances (I know the answer… no) Is this a podiatry bias? I know there has to be Nonop podiatrists out there on panels
Also I wonder if an ASC would be enough
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I assume @Adam Smasher is "volunteer staff"? You're not volunteering for anything if you're forced to take call. Doesn't sound right...
Switch to courtesy staff, consulting staff, etc... check the bylaws.
If a hospital does truly require call, go to other area ones instead.
PP pods should never be required to take call... leave that hospital employ FTE pods (and maybe associate "fellowship-trained foot and ankle surgeon" DPMs doing it at the direction of their owner to "market themselves").
I could switch to "affiliate staff" if I surrender my OR privileges. And the hospital system controls a lot of insurance plans so pts can only go to the hospital for surgery, not a competing asc, which will sound strange to many of you but that's the weirdness of the region I'm in.
And fwiw I do want to be on call for when the pts treated in my practice turn up there
And fwiw I do want to be on call for when the pts treated in my practice turn up there
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It seems the APMA data expert is no longer working there?
Did he finally discover the real data on podiatry saturation?
Did he discover what podiatry jobs actually pay?
Or did the data become too hard to manipulate for his former employer?
One day, I think he’s going to look back and realize what a weird job that was. Imagine being paid by a group of foot doctor organizations to study how poorly foot doctors are getting paid, then having to come on SDN and debate a bunch of random strangers about the data.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
Did he finally discover the real data on podiatry saturation?
Did he discover what podiatry jobs actually pay?
Or did the data become too hard to manipulate for his former employer?
One day, I think he’s going to look back and realize what a weird job that was. Imagine being paid by a group of foot doctor organizations to study how poorly foot doctors are getting paid, then having to come on SDN and debate a bunch of random strangers about the data.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
I am currently unpaid call though they rarely call me after hours or on weekends. I work in the hospital so can see consults in between patients.
I have emailed admin at my hospital for a meeting to discuss paid call. Not sure how much I should be asking for though. Anyone out there willing to share what their paid call rate is?
I have emailed admin at my hospital for a meeting to discuss paid call. Not sure how much I should be asking for though. Anyone out there willing to share what their paid call rate is?
He was just a tool being used to an end (ay pee em ay marketing).
Fwiw, he seemed legit... good of him to interact here. He has moved on per LinkedIn, yeah. They got what they needed. He was duped into thinking he was doing meaningful work, but it was marketing fodder all along (as SDN told him).
You can see the post where he was a bit miffed of the figure used for marketing (an informal prelim figure... but they obviously ran with it to try to get some more apps for incoming class this fall).
Podiatry school marketing is definitely the cat with 9 lives.
Since I've been in the game, I've seen:
"the Boomers will get old, they need foot care!"
"diabetes and wound care are a huge need, podiatry will meet that need!"
"all podiatrists will be surgeons... residency trained!"
...and now "podiatrists make $xyz according to [fake] income surveys!!!"
It's pretty wild. I am not sure of any health profession that spends more on marketing. Butts in the seats. Tuition in the bank accounts.
...But hey... we are not as smart as we think. We all fell for it. 🙃😐☹️
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SDN needs counter-marketing:
"Millennials aren't having kids, we won't have enough patients for 600 new podiatrists a a year"
"GLP-1's are cutting the rate of obesity and diabetes, podiatry will run out of nails and chronic wounds to scrape and bill Medicare for"
WTH. How few patients are you scheduled in clinic to be able to go see consults or round "in between patients"?
That is insane. We don't even have time to take a quick piss or call the ED back until lunch time.
Work for a hospital, have clinic next door, see 20 ish a day. Do 20 plus cases a month. Knock out consults between patients. Make 400k
20ish patients a day is correct. I only have one MA so basically impossible to do much more. I usually go during lunch really but have seen in between if there’s a cancellation or no show
Stats guy did solid work.
What the numbers were construed or used for- people can decide when they see both ends.
But the data compilation and numbers crunching was legitimate and he was more transparent on here than most posters I've seen.
Don't smear the guy. He was just doing his job.
What the numbers were construed or used for- people can decide when they see both ends.
But the data compilation and numbers crunching was legitimate and he was more transparent on here than most posters I've seen.
Don't smear the guy. He was just doing his job.
Oh yeah that guy was good. He was a mercenary. Did good work for a bad guy.
I mean it's not like some Mexican drug cartel asked him to kill a kid of arrival cartel leader...
BeaverBlade
Full Member
the funny thing is the ACFAS results are like 2x what the apma results are. how do you get a 100% discrepancy in salary.
ACFAS only surveyed its fellows, which accounts for part of it.
Also while the APMA survey at least paid lip service to the idea of being methodologically robust, the ACFAS survey (from our best and brightest scientific org) was a pretty quick e-mail survey of self-reported salary data.
Even if a significant number of DO schools were to open, those graduates would still be able to find jobs with reasonable benefits to pay off their loans. In contrast, the podiatry profession is increasingly being taken over by predatory private equity, yet there seems to be massive denial about this reality from both leadership and the schools. Furthermore, outside of typical clinical practice, MD and DO degrees open up numerous other professional opportunities that are not available with a podiatry degree.
BeaverBlade
Full Member
I need a survey on new grads in private equity. Going to guess it’s over 50%!
Retro: just for clarification…Why do you think the schools are connected to, for or against, or have any influence on PE?
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Because the school is a student generating factory………..which PE needs bodies to fill
There are volunteer faculty members at schools that have direct financial ties to PE practices
Yes! In tribute to Dolly sung to Jolene. Mycotic nail, mycotic nail let me treat you because I can. It’s been 60 days since we last met…
I think this is an important distinction that gets lost when we talk about podiatry compensation.
You can absolutely build a very valuable career with a DPM degree. But I don't think the DPM degree itself has all that much value in the open labor market.
Most successful podiatrists have to create that value after graduation. You build a referral network, start or buy a practice, find a niche, cold call hospitals, network your way into opportunities, build relationships, become known in your community, etc.
The easiest way to test the value of the actual degree is to take all of that away.
Take a successful 45-year-old podiatrist and tell him tomorrow that his spouse got transferred across the country. He has to move to a random desirable city where he knows nobody. Strip away his practice, referral network, hospital relationships, reputation, ASC ownership and everything else he spent 15 years building.
What is his DPM degree worth now?
How many advertised jobs can he apply for? What salary will they guarantee? How many employers will compete for him?
That's where I think the comparison with DO is important. A DO may have built a great practice or reputation too, but the underlying credential/specialty training generally has significant portable value. If an anesthesiologist, radiologist, hospitalist, psychiatrist, etc. moves across the country, there is an established labor market waiting for that credential.
Podiatry is much more "make your own luck." Find a niche. Network. Cold call. Market yourself. Start a practice. Buy a practice. Find a hospital that doesn't currently employ a podiatrist and convince them they should create a position for you.
Those can all be perfectly legitimate ways to build a great career. But I think we sometimes confuse the value of the career someone spent 15 years building with the value of the DPM degree itself.
If a degree requires you to manufacture much of its economic value yourself after graduation, while simultaneously carrying $250k-$400k of educational debt, that should probably be part of any serious discussion about compensation and workforce supply.
Okay I guess that's going to be a thing now. Instead of the meme thread we will have the parody song thread... I'm also going to be the founding member since I thought of it. Dueces
Nah, that’s a stretch. Schools and PE have no connection.
I've reviewed some PE contract offers for new grads recently, just shameful. PE in medicine as a whole is shameful, but I think worse in podiatry when podiatrists do it to their own. Pure greed.
BeaverBlade
Full Member
Podiatry is becoming what optometry has become with private equity. It’s just sad that our leaders are letting it happen. Also our salaries coincidentally aren’t too far apart
The leadership within these private equity groups primarily consists of past APMA presidents. As the primary owners and investors, they have a clear incentive to increase student enrollment.
sdupre_apma
Full Member
Hey all, thanks for the concern. Unfortunately for my mortgage, I haven't sold out my morals yet, but... time will tell I suppose? (I kid)
I am actually still doing work for APMA. Towards the end of last year I had the opportunity to start working on some crazy interesting stuff for a research think tank company that focuses on pioneering data privacy protection. Think, the stuff that lets massive very sensitive datasets release usable fine-grained information for the public to use without leaking respondent identity. Since then, I am (and have been) still working for APMA on things like the compensation study, associated workforce estimates, and (most recently) supporting the modifier-25 advocacy work with actual numbers to support our position to the fed.
First, on the "starting salary" question, yup, I wasn't super thrilled about how that was framed (not by APMA, but by the organization that put out those materials and the [not APMA] campaign). I did pass this up the chain at APMA, it's getting followed-up on. The annoyance is that it's not APMA that put out those materials and so it's not quite as fast as saying "hey, that needs to be changed".
Second, on the question about the status of APMA producing estimates of workforce demand (along with the number of new podiatry grads needed)... short answer is... it's complicated. I know, I know, terrible answer. I want to get good demand figures, many of you want to get good demand figures, and APMA leadership including specifically Meghan McClelland want to get good demand figures. Part of the reason why it hasn't been produced yet comes down to me and my wanting to get it right. We've explicitly had this conversation during an APMA directors meeting at the end of 2025, where Meghan made clear that those numbers are a priority, but I had to push back on our realistic ability to produce those well as a short-term goal (without also making APMA unable to do things like respond to modifier -25 policy discussions with real data).
So, why am I being obstructionist here? This is a weird one. There are two sides to the demand question... first, you've got demand for more-complicated podiatric expertise ranging from fairly standard stuff to more complex surgical needs. On the other side, you've got everything that frequently gets classified under terms like "toenail stuff". Those are very different demand "signals" to quantify, largely because the patient demands that would be used to model needs for the services are solidly different and also because the competition in terms of other specialties and providers who might also be providing such services in a given geographic location (and whose impacts might need to be considered in my models) are largely non-overlapping. This means that a number of the standard techniques I'd normally apply for such modeling would be inappropriate.
Now, are these just excuses that end with Sam saying that we can't do it? Thankfully, no. Demand modeling is part of the APMA research agenda approved for the new fiscal year and the other work that I've been doing this year key inputs that will help with this. The biggest delay is in making sure I/we do this right.
Hope that helps?
Sam
I am actually still doing work for APMA. Towards the end of last year I had the opportunity to start working on some crazy interesting stuff for a research think tank company that focuses on pioneering data privacy protection. Think, the stuff that lets massive very sensitive datasets release usable fine-grained information for the public to use without leaking respondent identity. Since then, I am (and have been) still working for APMA on things like the compensation study, associated workforce estimates, and (most recently) supporting the modifier-25 advocacy work with actual numbers to support our position to the fed.
First, on the "starting salary" question, yup, I wasn't super thrilled about how that was framed (not by APMA, but by the organization that put out those materials and the [not APMA] campaign). I did pass this up the chain at APMA, it's getting followed-up on. The annoyance is that it's not APMA that put out those materials and so it's not quite as fast as saying "hey, that needs to be changed".
Second, on the question about the status of APMA producing estimates of workforce demand (along with the number of new podiatry grads needed)... short answer is... it's complicated. I know, I know, terrible answer. I want to get good demand figures, many of you want to get good demand figures, and APMA leadership including specifically Meghan McClelland want to get good demand figures. Part of the reason why it hasn't been produced yet comes down to me and my wanting to get it right. We've explicitly had this conversation during an APMA directors meeting at the end of 2025, where Meghan made clear that those numbers are a priority, but I had to push back on our realistic ability to produce those well as a short-term goal (without also making APMA unable to do things like respond to modifier -25 policy discussions with real data).
So, why am I being obstructionist here? This is a weird one. There are two sides to the demand question... first, you've got demand for more-complicated podiatric expertise ranging from fairly standard stuff to more complex surgical needs. On the other side, you've got everything that frequently gets classified under terms like "toenail stuff". Those are very different demand "signals" to quantify, largely because the patient demands that would be used to model needs for the services are solidly different and also because the competition in terms of other specialties and providers who might also be providing such services in a given geographic location (and whose impacts might need to be considered in my models) are largely non-overlapping. This means that a number of the standard techniques I'd normally apply for such modeling would be inappropriate.
Now, are these just excuses that end with Sam saying that we can't do it? Thankfully, no. Demand modeling is part of the APMA research agenda approved for the new fiscal year and the other work that I've been doing this year key inputs that will help with this. The biggest delay is in making sure I/we do this right.
Hope that helps?
Sam
