Sorry, but I hate when practicing pods say this...usually AAPPM type folk. Only because its so often used as an excuse as to why they CHOOSE not to do surgery when in fact they didn't receive the training to do surgery in the first place. This isn't at all directed at ExperiencedDPM BTW. Look, making money in medicine is about ownership. Owning a practice or office space, having a stake in a surgery center, imaging center, owning IP with a device/hardware company, etc. But then this TFP comes along and says "surgery doesn't pay." He/she is partly right, inefficient surgery doesn't pay, and at some point big recons that are taking a lot of time in the OR and don't reimburse much more than a fibula ORIF are more for professional satisfaction than for economy purposes. But the TFP isn't accounting for the additional revenue streams that go along with surgery, or the fact that if this second year resident can fix a bimal in under an hour skin to skin with relative ease, a seasoned surgeon can do it quicker (that's ~$800-900 from medicare) and it only takes 3, 5 min post-op visits before you are out of the global in nearly every case. If you are in a group where the office and its staff are running a clinic every day then your OR $ have significantly lower overhead too. Tell Hyer that surgery doesn't pay...guy received $658,413.27 in 2014 for consulting fees, royalties, speaking fees, travel expenses, meals, etc...all because he does surgery. That's on top of his actual collections from the care he provided. And if you think that is impressive, look up a few of the big dog ortho guys who receive millions each year.
Surgery can definitely pay. So can nothing but in office procedures. You never hear a DPM who does a lot of surgery say "clinic doesn't pay," which is funny because the other guys always want to talk about surgery not making you any money. The truth is you can make good money in a well run, busy practice no matter how aggressive you are booking cases. Heck, Barry Block makes a butt ton of money and he does nothing other than pump spam into your inbox every day (let us all just pray that no other medical professionals subscribe to PMnews in fear that it somehow goes mainstream). /rant