A new grad in 2022?
Sorry exaggeration helps no one
I don't think there has been anything exaggerated in this thread at all. Hopefully we can keep this in the public forum because I know a lot of people are picking specialties based on projected income, even if they will never admit it to anyone.
I'll just ignore numbers from the past, because that world is dead to us. I'm also only going to use numbers I have personally seen or heard (i.e. a friend telling me they are making X salary for reason Y, not a friend telling me about rumors).
For the medical student lurkers, important definitions that are confusing because the way physicians "work" and get paid are different than other sectors of the economy:
"Private practice" can mean a few different things:
- "physician-owned" private practice means at least one or more docs formed an LLC (well, usually a PLLC) to provide services
- "employed" private practice usually means a doc is an employee of a community hospital and is paid in a similar way to "other" jobs (as in, they are given a W2 form to pay their taxes, hence the distinction you'll see between "W2 jobs" and other ways to get paid)
Within "physician-owned" private practice:
- there are groups that own the linear accelerators used to treat patients (and sometimes the property/real estate as well)
- there are groups that do not own the linear accelerators
When a private practice doctor treats a patient, how they are paid changes drastically based on who owns the equipment. Reimbursement from insurance is broken into "technical" and "professional" components, which is really like "overhead" and "expertise". If they own the equipment, they get both. If they don't own the equipment, the technical money goes to the hospital, and the professional component goes to the physician. Employed physicians are paid by the hospital in various ways, sometimes as a fixed salary, sometimes as a percentage of what they generate for the hospital, etc etc.
That's grossly oversimplified, but again...this isn't part of the med school curriculum.
1) Within the last 3-5 years, I know that private docs with technical revenue with a salary of $900k-$1.2mil. This is, of course, exceedingly rare now. This is not a number most of us can dream about, this is a number only for those with luck and pedigree...and an extra dose of luck. There are not a lot of private practices with technical revenue left.
2) For private docs (LLC) on professional revenue contracts on the moderate-to-high busy scale (meaning, 25-35 patients on beam per doc), full partner salary is generally $675k-$750k. There are more of these types of groups out there than the linac-owning groups, but they're also selling out and vanishing as founding partners retire. These are the groups that generally start new (associate) physicians at $290k-$350k, and path to full partner ranges from 2-7 years.
3) For private docs employed by a hospital, max salary seems to be hovering in the $550k range right now. I know of "hybrid" groups (not traditional physician-owned LLCs but more "corporate") who max out closer to $600k. For these hybrid groups, there is also a period of 3-5 years of a lower/flat salary before switching more to a production-based salary, and that number seems to hover around $375k-$425k.
4) Finally, for "academia" (whatever that means in 2022), starting salaries last year and this year seem to mostly be around $280-$380k. Ceiling depends on geography - as always, more desirable areas make less. I know senior faculty in the northeast stuck at basically $450-500k, and the same level faculty making maybe $550k in semi-rural south/southeast.
So, yeah. Based on trends for the last 10 years, I would say that anyone who starts RadOnc residency in 2022 and graduates in 2027: the odds are overwhelming high that they will work either as a W2-employed physician for a hospital or as some flavor of "faculty" in an academic medical center (also as a W2 employee), will probably start around $300k (
not adjusted for inflation), have a ceiling around $500k, and can expect to make less if they practice in a more "desirable" geography.