CDX2 I'm not sure you're getting your information from. A few years back an Auckland trainee went to Australia and got offered north of 350k Australian dollars (he refused to reveal his precise salary offer) as a newly minted pathologist. And he wasn't unique, traditionally NZ trainees would head to Australia once qualified due to the salary difference. Remember, at least 70% of pathologists in Australia work in the private sector, and the salaries in the private sector is much higher than public hospitals. The salary ceiling for senior anatomical pathologists in the private sector is not bad at all.
$US 175K is currently $AU 249K.
One of the current 1st year consultants at the private lab I'm in said they're earning around $AU 180-200K, and they're working full-time. This is slightly higher than the current 1st year consultant pay in public hospitals in Victoria / New South Wales, but they need to meet arbitrary billing targets (which they can't explicitly specify to me) in addition to attempting to get specimen referrals to maintain their workload (otherwise the lab is seen as "unprofitable" and could get shut down)...
Is that Auckland trainee working in Western Australia? I know they pay more there than the other states coz of the previous mining boom, but the mining boom is now over. I honestly think he'd be an exception, and that there's more to the story as to how he got offered more than $AU 350K.
He might be extremely talented (?Derm path, ?molecular), but I suspect he also managed to negotiate $AU 350K+ in exchange for meeting an extremely high Medicare billing target +/- on-call duties.
Given that a single GI / skin punch biopsy bills Medicare for $97.15, he'd need to report ~3600 biopsies / year just to cover his salary alone.
Obviously a private company would never permit that as they also need to cover the cost of lab equipment and other lab staff, plus they wanna make a profit.
Hypothetically at best he'd negotiate a ***generous*** 33% cut of the Medicare billings, in which he'd need to report ~10,800 biopsies / year, or ~46 biopsies for every working day.
And I'm not aware of any 1st year consultants who purely report on biopsies all year round, unless they were perhaps working in a niche area or boutique lab.
There are other specimens that bill more than $97.15 (tumour mastectomy with IHC = $541.35), but they often involve a lot more blocks (easily 15+ blocks), and from observations the consultants spend much more time analyzing / reporting them compared to the financially equivalent number of biopsies, so it's less efficient to achieve their billing targets.
And with the current oversupply, the private companies can technically get away with offering lower salaries to new consultants compared to years before, so the discrepancy between public and private won't be as extreme compared to the past. Supply vs demand...
