I wish I could give you an optimistic answer. I would say that most of the practicing DB pediatricians are mostly academics, and their patient care responsibilities may be down to 1-2 clinic days a week. From a salary standpoint, it mostly depends on the politics, competition, and needs of that particular faculty (which is pretty much the same for any non-hospital based pediatric sub-specialty).
Trying to do it via private practice can be nightmarish, and I speak from personal experience. Spending 60-90 minutes to assess a child for autism, and the loads of time needed to write/dictate that kind of note; well you can honestly see 6 kids with URI's and ear infections during that amount of time and get reimbursed a ton more. Second, it is a relatively new specialty. And I was the only DB specialist in my community. I quickly learned that what is "billable" is not always "reimbursable." Doing various standardized neurocognitive assessments which I later billed for were later denied due to it being am "noncovered benefit." Eventually, one of the local payors labelled me a mental health provider; which meant patients who saw me needed to meet a much higher deductible before the insurers would pay for their visits. The only way I have seen many private DB pediatricians survive in practice is to have patients pay cash upfront. Such a model is unfortunately not very practical in my community (30 % of the children here are reportedly on Medicaid).
At some point, I may try private practice again; but I'm currently comfortable at my current job where I do mostly general peds with a little bit of DB on the side. When I do though it will be after having learned some hard lessons. One of which is doing it in such a way as to minimize any overhead, stop acting like the notes need to be some form of literary masterpeice, be better at fighting for certain CPT codes to be covered, and not be hired by a colleague of another specialty who, despite some overlap in specialties, had minimal understanding about the everyday practice of the DB peds specialty.
As for the article cited above, please note: "the annual salary of a pediatrician, including those specializing in developmental-behavioral pediatrics, ranges from $160,111 to $228,750." I have a feeling this range was inclusive of all pediatric subspecialties just based on how that sentence was phrased.
Hope this helps,
Nardo
