A lot of them are still pretty bad with high workload and low pay. At a place down the street from me the chair (of a dept well over 100 with physicians + CRNAs) is only at 600K. Even with lots of hustle the rank and file are sub 500K and can’t break it. They have 1:3-4 direction requirements too. Yet people keep signing up (as people keep leaving).
This was my experience interviewing at academic places. Yes you could pick up more work but it still seemed $500-550k was where most people topped out, and they were working a lot more hours than I do and still making less :/ I’m not saying it will always be this way and it does seem academics is slowly improving.
Surprised people keep signing up for such a non-competitive job when its easy to get a solid job almost anywhere you want right now. What's the draw? Big name institution? Extremely desirable locale?
I was at a place that would pay max $2000 for a 24 hr call. Now they changed it all the way up to $2500 and people still sign up.
What part of the country?
West
Before I landed where I am now, I was doing 24h Saturday locums shifts at an academic trauma center. Essentially continuous work for the shift, 2:1 with a resident and CRNA. It included cardiac, but liver call was someone else. Any gaps in the emergencies were filled, usually by ortho and gen surg, some of whom actually hung around the OR eyeballing the board and looking for gaps to squeeze in non-urgent inpatient garbage. Literally bullying the OR charge RN to stuff bull**** into the cracks.
It was worth it to me then because I wanted to supplement my way-below-market Navy pay, and because I needed to scrounge up pump cases after the Navy closed our cardiac surgery program. And the Navy job was low production, low stress - so I could burn hard doing locums for a while and then recharge at the government job, without feeling suicidal.
Their benefits are awesome, they have a ton of admin/sick time, and a lot of incentive pay on top of that. And of course it’s a super desirable place to live, so I think that could actually be a great job.
Job posting June 4, 2021
More recent posting on gasworks for peds anesthesiologist at same campus - starting $320. Posted 1/3/24. Suggests to me this is still an accurate reflection of base salary expectations.
It also says “variable pay 60-100k” described on their website as "(call, incentive)" Q15 call is pretty light. I see other references online to a 10% contribution to retirement too. That might bring the amount to 400k 7 weeks academic time, 6 weeks vacation + 32-40k retirement to start. The biggest thing is how many hours is expected for base pay.More recent posting on gasworks for peds anesthesiologist at same campus - starting $320. Posted 1/3/24. Suggests to me this is still an accurate reflection of base salary expectations.
Maybe we have different definitions of what "base salary" means. IMO, if you're adding on extra call requirements and speculating 10% retirement contributions then sure we can say anything is reaching parity with anything.
In my (non-Denver) metro, the average unit in private groups is stagnant or decreasing and subsidies have been hard won, so their income is stagnant. Academics pays based on salary surveys which have increased over the past 3-5 years, so pay has increased 10-20% in many groups. Note that ‘private’ hospital employed jobs have also increased given big raises as they also pay based on surveys, but I’d argue those are not really private practices.
Well that’s the thing. Where I trained base pay was 40 hours a week, no call, not even late hours. It was for like 7-3 5 days a week. You did anything beyond that (working late, weekend day, overnight, transplant call, pain, more than 40 hours a week etc) you got more. The average comp was >50% base pay and average hours was about 50.
similar in my state for the chiefs at the big state medical center, but what do the regular docs get? more like 400-450 IME
