Detailed Economic Analysis of Physician Earnings in the US

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Lucca

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Sorry if already been posted, didn't read through the front page but thought this would spark Discourse here.

Including a few of the key figures I found interesting.

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and here's a helpful visualization someone posted on twitter from the data in the tables:

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Sources? Some of those salaries look a little lower than I have seen elsewhere. Also, confused on what the 'residency duration' means because many don't match how long residencies actualy are. For example neurology is not a 6 year residency unless you do multiple fellowships. And IM is 3 years not 4
 
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Chibucks15 said:
Sources? Some of those salaries look a little lower than I have seen elsewhere. Also, confused on what the 'residency duration' means because many don't match how long residencies actualy are. For example neurology is not a 6 year residency unless you do multiple fellowships. And IM is 3 years not 4
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It's from national tax data, N = ~ 800K. Since it was written by economists for economists I suspect "residency" just means "training" and they calculated an average number for all the physicians they had in their data.

The most current draft is here:

 
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Lucca said:
unsurprisingly, owning things = more money than not owning things.

View attachment 314241
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Whats curious about this is that it doesnt really state how those doctors ended up owning that. I have a classmate who's family owns a 100 million+ company. Once the dude inherits it it is sure that he sure to be in the top 1% of income earners according to that methodology, but not sure if he did much to get there.
 
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Nephro salary seems wrong
 
EM averaging 44 hours/week? Ophtho making 540k average? Hospitalists listed as 54 hrs/week, must not be adjusting whatsoever for weeks off?

I don't trust this data at all.
 
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Is $228k really what family gets? Like that sounds really good to me. But then I see people acting like you make what some lazy teacher makes, so i'm confused?
 
I think folks are confusing what the data is about. It’s about wealth and income which is not *just* what you get paid for providing care.

There’s like 25 pages of text with the details...
 
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I see the radiologists learned their lesson about reporting accurate salary figures. Smart.
 
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efle said:
They made an error for neurosurg (added an accidental negative sign)
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I thought vascular surgery was busy stalking residents on Twitter
 
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Anyone else considering going OMM cash practice after seeing this? Are you kidding me?
 
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Tenk said:
Not really. Women are not be stupid enough to do that bikini study and stalk female doctors on social media. Only men are that stupid.
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Erica L. Mitchell probably begs to differ
 
Giovanotto said:
Anyone else considering going OMM cash practice after seeing this? Are you kidding me?
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It's always been my wildcard backup plan. Cash based OMM van at construction sites. Then expand to a food truck and an IV or ketamine clinic truck too.
 
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Tenk said:
Not really. Women are not be stupid enough to do that bikini study and stalk female doctors on social media. Only men are that stupid.
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It was a stupid study but to be fair they didn’t stalk only females. The narrative was made into a gender issue by Twitter users, not by the study authors.

It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that employers including in other professions judge you based on social media content—in fact many employers of MBA level positions search social media profiles. Didn’t need a study to show that.
 
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Is including vacation weeks as part of calculating a persons average weekly work hours normal? I feel like it only happens in medicine


edit: can’treally even find it in the paper
 
kb1900 said:
Is including vacation weeks as part of calculating a persons average weekly work hours normal? I feel like it only happens in medicine


edit: can’treally even find it in the paper
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Yeah and for fields like rads and hospitalist it's pretty important to include!

I also tried reading more about their methods but I'm not familiar enough with tax paperwork to understand why some of their values look glaringly inaccurate for 2017 (like ophtho which reports numbers nearly 50% lower in all the major surveys like MGMA, AMGA)
 
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Physicians make too much money and I am ok with that...
 
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Burnermed said:
Don't think PCP makes 130K per year...
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These are General Practitioners (1-yr post grad training). 134k/yr seems low; i know a few who make ~200k/yr.

They are limited in what they can do because it's almost impossible for them to get hospital privilege (though I know one who does).
 
Osteosaur said:
Is $228k really what family gets? Like that sounds really good to me. But then I see people acting like you make what some lazy teacher makes, so i'm confused?
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228k for FM seems about right... People act that way because their derm counterpart is making 500k+ and work the same # of hours. But derm physician can see 40+ patients per day in 8 hrs
 
Splenda88 said:
228k for FM seems about right... People act that way because their derm counterpart is making 500k+ and work the same # of hours. But derm physician can see 40+ patients per day in 8 hrs
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One highly understated aspect of Derm efficiency is how well they use the EMR and support staff. This allows them to see many more patients. I’m a senior Derm resident, have worked many clinics in all kinds of fields so I’ve seen the difference.

they literally never bothered to teach me clinical efficiency in the office during my medicine internship. I saw like 2-3 patients per half day and at the time had zero need to ramp up efficiency to the point where every key stroke and foot step matters like I did when I joined derm
 
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PhillyMed777 said:
One highly understated aspect of Derm efficiency is how well they use the EMR and support staff. This allows them to see many more patients. I’m a senior Derm resident, have worked many clinics in all kinds of fields so I’ve seen the difference.

they literally never bothered to teach me clinical efficiency in the office during my medicine internship. I saw like 2-3 patients per half day and at the time had zero need to ramp up efficiency to the point where every key stroke and foot step matters like I did when I joined derm
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IM/FM physicians need to learn to see tons of patients in clinic during actual practice, regardless of training. Sure, it's still not as much as derm, but the patients have tons of issues. As an IM intern, I saw double that number per half day, and that was still a very light load compared to PC attendings in practice (despite having to staff). You likely went to a chill medicine program without great training, as you went into dermatology.
 
efle said:
Yeah and for fields like rads and hospitalist it's pretty important to include!

I also tried reading more about their methods but I'm not familiar enough with tax paperwork to understand why some of their values look glaringly inaccurate for 2017 (like ophtho which reports numbers nearly 50% lower in all the major surveys like MGMA, AMGA)
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Starting salary for ophtho is usually in the low 200s, but they make at lot more after a couple of years (350-400k)... Medscape salary survey put the average at 378k/year.
 
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Splenda88 said:
Starting salary for ophtho is usually in the low 200s, but they make at lot more after a couple of years (400k+)...
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Idk man MGMA 2018 has the average private practice ophthalmologist at 379 (~350 on both coasts)
 
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efle said:
Idk man MGMA 2018 has the average private practice ophthalmologist at 379 (~350 on both coasts)
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Ophthalmologists probably don't report their true salary... It seems like they make ~500k after a few years from reading the ophtho forum in SDN. I tend to believe the number poster here since they are from tax data...

forums.studentdoctor.net

Are you happy in ophthalmology? The trending questionnaire thread

There's a similar thread running in the EM/radiology/anesthesia/surgery forums with some great and informative responses. I know there's a lot of talk here about the general future of this specialty, but I think people would enjoy hearing from current young and older ophthalmology attendings how...
forums.studentdoctor.net forums.studentdoctor.net
 
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Splenda88 said:
Ophthalmologists probably don't report their true salary... It seems like they make ~500k after a few years from reading the ophtho forum in SDN. I tend to believe the number poster here since they are from tax data...

forums.studentdoctor.net

Are you happy in ophthalmology? The trending questionnaire thread

There's a similar thread running in the EM/radiology/anesthesia/surgery forums with some great and informative responses. I know there's a lot of talk here about the general future of this specialty, but I think people would enjoy hearing from current young and older ophthalmology attendings how...
forums.studentdoctor.net forums.studentdoctor.net
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But what's weird is the other specialties line up much better with MGMA, and if you look at the methodology they actually aren't just pulling the straight gross income values off of tax returns, they're doing tons of guesswork and approximations to try and capture how much is specifically coming from clinical work. Seems more likely that there's something wonky about their methods for Ophtho, rather than Ophtho collectively agreeing to deflate their numbers on surveys while no other specialties do so.
 
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These numbers are highly inaccurate. Not even close to actual numbers. For the most part these salaries are way too high for most of the specialities.
 
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TAVR4life said:
These numbers are highly inaccurate. Not even close to actual numbers. For the most part these salaries are way too high for most of the specialities.
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It's only in ophtho and probably derm that I think they are off.
 
efle said:
But what's weird is the other specialties line up much better with MGMA, and if you look at the methodology they actually aren't just pulling the straight gross income values off of tax returns, they're doing tons of guesswork and approximations to try and capture how much is specifically coming from clinical work. Seems more likely that there's something wonky about their methods for Ophtho, rather than Ophtho collectively agreeing to deflate their numbers on surveys while no other specialties do so.
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I don't have access to MGMA, but my guess is that sample for ophtho might be very low and few not forthcoming answers might screw up the average.
 
I think I'm understanding the problem. They mention that there's a big uptick at the top percentiles with top 1% of docs making 4mil+

Stuff like MGMA is instead medians and IQRs

We're probably seeing a bunch of specialties like Derm and Ophtho have their numbers spiked up by a very outlying group in the top decile in those fields. Similarly there appears to be no control for academic vs private, so specialties with more positions in academia will be deflated.
 
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Splenda88 said:
It's only in ophtho and probably derm that I think they are off.
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Mean $586 for rad onc? They get paid well but that is very misleading to think that is your typical salary for the average rad onc

These are also mean numbers so outliers will skew these numbers to be much higher than they are in reality. Should have done median.
 
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efle said:
I think I'm understanding the problem. They mention that there's a big uptick at the top percentiles with top 1% of docs making 4mil+

Stuff like MGMA is instead medians and IQRs

We're probably seeing a bunch of specialties like Derm and Ophtho have their numbers spiked up by a very outlying group in the top decile in those fields. Similarly there appears to be no control for academic vs private, so specialties with more positions in academia will be deflated.
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Yes exactly just posted this as well

These salaries are drastically being skewed by the outliers.
 
If you go through the ophtho forum, you’d think every private practice ophtho is making 500,000 - 7 figures. They laugh at the survey data lol.
But seriously, this study doesn’t differentiate between general ophtho and higher earning subspecialties like retina, which could contribute.
 
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Please remember these are MEAN salaries, which are heavily influenced by outliers (I.e. the top 5% and 1% the authors talk about)
 
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