How much do doctors Really make

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dutchman

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I wonder if there is any real resource that tells u how much doctors actually make?
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And b4 I start getting the usual "do it for the love of the profession" might I add that I can't love something I have never done. That's like people that fall in love with someone online without seeing the person. So guys lets keep it real.
 
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Thanks guys. Do these figures reflect the "take home" income after all the expenditure
 
dutchman said:
Thanks guys. Do these figures reflect the "take home" income after all the expenditure
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i would also assume that you didn't take into account taxes...so it's not a "take home income" by any stretch..
 
babaghannough said:
i would also assume that you didn't take into account taxes...so it's not a "take home income" by any stretch..
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Taxes are never already taken out when places report salary figures. You pay taxes on your salary. That's real life.
Also bear in mind that median salaries probably average in people right out of residency with people 20 years out, so the salary right out of residency will almost certainly be lower than that average. And about half the people out there will earn less than whatever average figure you see.
Also note that according to a recent AMSA publication, physician salaries have declined about 7% in the last decade so salary lists over a few years old are also going to be high.
Expect to be comfortable but not excessively rich in this field.
 
babaghannough said:
i would also assume that you didn't take into account taxes...so it's not a "take home income" by any stretch..
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sorry about the confusion. I guess i should re-phrase the question. How much do doctors make, less their malpractice insurance? I think this is important to know cos, every academic requirement for the field of medicine is spelled out clearly and we all know that stuff by heart. But it is rear to find pre-med students that remotely understand the real life issues involved in the practice of medicine. That is why u have all these frustrated "debt ridden" doctors spilling bad energy all over the place, cos they found the facts out late.
 
The Data posted by RDickerson is takehome earnings before taxes. So yes expenses have been removed.
 
dutchman said:
sorry about the confusion. I guess i should re-phrase the question. How much do doctors make, less their malpractice insurance? I think this is important to know cos, every academic requirement for the field of medicine is spelled out clearly and we all know that stuff by heart. But it is rear to find pre-med students that remotely understand the real life issues involved in the practice of medicine. That is why u have all these frustrated "debt ridden" doctors spilling bad energy all over the place, cos they found the facts out late.
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Is this some sort of weird IM language? I have no clue what you are trying to say because of all the abbreviations.
 
Law2Doc said:
Is this some sort of weird IM language? I have no clue what you are trying to say because of all the abbreviations.
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Yeah I don't know. We've made it about as clear as can be.

I'm smelling a troll...

Or maybe it was the hot pockets I just ate.

Hmm......
 
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Think of the time savings though, if you abbreviate 'before' to 'b4', and 'because' to 'cos', you're really being productive and efficient. Perhaps he is addressing a cousin using some peculiar vernacular we are unfamiliar with? While I'm ranting, the crappy grammar that permeates SDN drives me nuts. People! There is a difference between "there", "their", and "they're" !!!! You should all be able to get this much right! ( or is that rite? write?)
Thank you. My rant is over.
 
That's it! I'm doing SPINE SURGERY!
 
geogil said:
Think of the time savings though, if you abbreviate 'before' to 'b4', and 'because' to 'cos', you're really being productive and efficient. Perhaps he is addressing a cousin using some peculiar vernacular we are unfamiliar with? While I'm ranting, the crappy grammar that permeates SDN drives me nuts. People! There is a difference between "there", "their", and "they're" !!!! You should all be able to get this much right! ( or is that rite? write?)
Thank you. My rant is over.
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Agreed.

It's that type-A personality again.

Maybe we should list that under the 'what are my faults' thread.

"Well, I can't handle it when other SDNers do not type correctly. I am working very hard on it though."
 
geogil said:
Think of the time savings though, if you abbreviate 'before' to 'b4', and 'because' to 'cos', you're really being productive and efficient.
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Even if he thought it was saving time to abbreviate, I can assure him it doesn't if he has to explain what he's saying for anyone to understand. Unless you are IM'ing someone via something without a real keyboard, I think you really need to use whole words. It's just very high school.
 
Law2Doc said:
Is this some sort of weird IM language? I have no clue what you are trying to say because of all the abbreviations.
Click to expand...

zimmie256 said:
In this case cos does not equal cosine. :laugh:
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geogil said:
Think of the time savings though, if you abbreviate 'before' to 'b4', and 'because' to 'cos', you're really being productive and efficient. Perhaps he is addressing a cousin using some peculiar vernacular we are unfamiliar with? While I'm ranting, the crappy grammar that permeates SDN drives me nuts. People! There is a difference between "there", "their", and "they're" !!!! You should all be able to get this much right! ( or is that rite? write?)
Thank you. My rant is over.
Click to expand...

Law2Doc said:
Even if he thought it was saving time to abbreviate, I can assure him it doesn't if he has to explain what he's saying for anyone to understand. Unless you are IM'ing someone via something without a real keyboard, I think you really need to use whole words. It's just very high school.
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I think that the post was more than clear enough to understand. I mean, really there were two abbreviations for crying out loud. The anal-retentive nature of the SDN posters never ceases to amaze me.

LOLROFLMAOBBQWTF!!!111000z0rz!
 
dutchman said:
And b4 I start getting the usual "do it for the love of the profession" might I add that I can't love something I have never done. That's like people that fall in love with someone online without seeing the person. So guys lets keep it real.
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LOL
 
lmao @ spine surgery

I'll stick with cardiovascular surgery tyvm.
 
money . money, and they say whay we have this problem with healthcare
 
I'm going into Anesthesiology pain management, I made my decision long ago. I never really cared up until now about the pay, and I'm actually glad I might one day be higher paid than other doctor whilst loving my job.
As judgemental as it may seem, I think just maybe a few us on this forum might be going into a medical field for all the wrong reasons, especially the money part.
If I'm going to do something for the rest of my life, it may as well be something I love and enjoy every minute of.(Hopefully in later retrospect:laugh: )
 
sorry guys for killing your English language, I am foreign. Just got accepted to med school and I am beginning to look at things carefully before I commit myself to this long process. I have all the information I need about work hours and legal issues, I just want to know what doctors really earn. Law2doc u say i am using too many abbreviations, but in the same sentence you use "IM" what is up with that?
4chan I don't think there is anything wrong with being motvated by money, as long as it is not your only motivation. Not everyone can come up with those magical reasons why they are going into the field. I know we hate to admit it but for most of us it is just a basic career decision.
 
dutchman said:
I wonder if there is any real resource that tells u how much doctors actually make? I am asking this cos lately i have been seeing posts and stories of doctors being in the negative cos of Malpractice insurance and other expenditures. So is there actually a way of finding out the bottom line average income after expenditure? Cos if I am going to end up making a janitor's pay as a surgeon I will like to know now, so i can tell med schools "SCREW U GUYS I AM GOIN HOME" :D
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They only end up making about $20,000 a year, and that's for specialists working 110-hour weeks. Honest! You should really pursue another line of work because as a doctor, you'll end up poor. Or if you decide to try for med school, I'd advise bringing up your financial concerns with the admissions committees. They should be very good about helping you make the right career decision.
 
Law2Doc said:
In the english language, there's a difference between using an accepted acronym and creating an abbreviated word. Thus IM is okay, as is SCUBA, MCAT etc., but u or cos isn't.
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I see u are determined to display your linguistics prowess. Just stick to the damn topic
 
dutchman said:
Thanks guys. Do these figures reflect the "take home" income after all the expenditure
Click to expand...

This has already been addressed in this thread, but it's such a common misconception on these boards that I wish there were a sticky about it. A private practice is a business that takes in revenue. When an insurance company or patient pays, they are paying the practice, not the doc himself (even if it's a solo practice). The docs then use this practice money to pay expenses like malpractice insurance, office rent and utility bills, office staff wages, supplies, etc. Then they take whatever's left over and pay it to themselves as income. So yes, when you see reported incomes, they are doctors' own personal take-home incomes, AFTER everything except taxes.

Academic docs, or those who work for hospitals, are paid a salary, and their employer covers expenses. So the numbers reported by those docs, too, are personal pre-tax take-home incomes.
 
Trismegistus4 said:
This has already been addressed in this thread, but it's such a common misconception on these boards that I wish there were a sticky about it. A private practice is a business that takes in revenue. When an insurance company or patient pays, they are paying the practice, not the doc himself (even if it's a solo practice). The docs then use this practice money to pay expenses like malpractice insurance, office rent and utility bills, office staff wages, supplies, etc. Then they take whatever's left over and pay it to themselves as income. So yes, when you see reported incomes, they are doctors' own personal take-home incomes, AFTER everything except taxes.

Academic docs, or those who work for hospitals, are paid a salary, and their employer covers expenses. So the numbers reported by those docs, too, are personal pre-tax take-home incomes.
Click to expand...

To expand on what you are saying, even doctors with their own businesses in private practice are going to make themselves an "employee" of the entity through which they practice (usually a professional corporation or professional LLC), and will pay themselves a salary from that entity. They then report that salary as income on their tax returns and will pay taxes accordingly. You always want some entity between you and the patients so that when you are sued, you have some level of insulation (although this is far from inpenetrable).
 
FWIW, here is a salary survey link attributed to JAMA that had been posted on the allo board, which I think looks more realistic. (Some of the max numbers in the allied list look kind of questionable). Bear in mind that average includes people many years out as well as post residency newbies, and that salaries have actually decreased somewhat over the past few years so 2003 numbers and hours may not still be as high.

http://www.medfriends.org/specialty_hours_worked.htm
 
For the record I would actually work the field of medicine for a lot less than what these figures are saying. the point I was trying to make is that i don't want to be forced out of the field due to financial problems. I know it sounds crazy, but if you read enough posts on this website, you would see people saying all sorts of crazy stuff about how doctors are doomed(financially)
I also found this resource which is pretty helpfull ->http://www.aamc.org/students/cim/specialties.htm

And thanks law2doc that website was pretty helpfull too
 
dutchman said:
For the record I would actually work the field of medicine for a lot less than what these figures are saying. the point I was trying to make is that i don't want to be forced out of the field due to financial problems. I know it sounds crazy, but if you read enough posts on this website, you would see people saying all sorts of crazy stuff about how doctors are doomed(financially)
I also found this resource which is pretty helpfull ->http://www.aamc.org/students/cim/
Click to expand...

They certainly aren't doomed, but it is the only profession where average incomes have been receding (at a rate of about 7%) over the last decade. At the same time hours have generally been increasing, as insurance reimbursements require longer hours to earn close to the same ballpark in certain specialties. So no, it's not doomed, and you will be comfortable. But I wouldn't start counting all the money you are going to earn.
 
Law2Doc said:
FWIW, here is a salary survey link attributed to JAMA that had been posted on the allo board, which I think looks more realistic. (Some of the max numbers in the allied list look kind of questionable). Bear in mind that average includes people many years out as well as post residency newbies, and that salaries have actually decreased somewhat over the past few years so 2003 numbers and hours may not still be as high.

http://www.medfriends.org/specialty_hours_worked.htm
Click to expand...

Actually, in the NYC area there are definitely doctors in almost all those fields who actually make more than the max listed there. I only know this because I probably know too many people who work in healthcare. But one of my friends worked for a urologist and saw the bills and expenses and everything including the income coming in...and trust me it was higher than what you're seeing there as the max urology income. Not everyone fills out those surveys, so the max is always going to be higher than whatever the max in a survey is.

However, this is largely a matter of how good of a businessman you are-and not neccessarily related to how good of a doctor you are. If you start your own private practice and grow it fast enough you could be hiring tons of other docs to do your work for you and just rake in the cash. I went to this Opthmologist's office once and he was basically never even there and just had other people do all his work-plus they were pretty greedy as it was an insisted everyone buy like 4 boxes of contacts from them if you get a prescription (at quite the markup too). But I do know that he owned several clinics and must have had like 12+ doctors working for him

Come to think of it though, that might not show up in a salary survey since technically that's his income from being the owner of several clinics. But that dude was raking in well over 1 million a year.

Anyways, even if you only make $300K a year, if you saved it up properly and invested it in much better investment vehicles than some guy who makes $500K a year, you could very well be getting back so much money via dividends and the like that you'd be richer anyway. Being rich isn't just about how high your damn income is.

Or heck, save up some money as a doc and open a successful and hot restaurant-those can pull in several million a year if you're good at it (in a major city like NYC-obviously not in the boondocks). But then again that has nothing to do with being a doctor either.

Basically I'm saying that if you just want money you should go be a businessman. And if you want lots of money as a doctor it's also going to depend on your business running skills.
 
Cirrus83 said:
Not everyone fills out those surveys, so the max is always going to be higher than whatever the max in a survey is.
Click to expand...

Actually, having been a professional and having gotten many of these surveys in my career, I can assure you that the highest earners are the ones who fill this out (because others tend to be less secure about broadcasting how poorly they are doing), and there is a certain amount of exaggeration in such numbers, and thus survey evidence almost always is higher than actual.
 
Law2Doc said:
Actually, having been a professional and having gotten many of these surveys in my career, I can assure you that the highest earners are the ones who fill this out (because others tend to be less secure about broadcasting how poorly they are doing), and there is a certain amount of exaggeration in such numbers, and thus survey evidence almost always is higher than actual.
Click to expand...

I could see how this would make the average income reported in surveys higher than actual. However, I think the previous poster was pointing out that the person making the maximum amount in a field is unlikely to be included in a survey just by chance. Therefore the highest reported salary in a survey is probably not the highest actually in the field.

Nevertheless, as most of us won't make the max (or anywhere near it), you raise a very good point about the average salary reporting inflation.
 
Cirrus83 said:
Basically I'm saying that if you just want money you should go be a businessman. And if you want lots of money as a doctor it's also going to depend on your business running skills.
Click to expand...

Actually, the barriers to entry in opening a medical practice in this era of insurance company domination and PCP requirements make it considerably more difficult to get into the fast lane, as compared to those who got into the field a few decades back, even with great business skills.
 
MJB said:
Yep, it will suck only being "comfortable" on a couple hundred grand.

Good lord L2D. :)
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Comfortable is like $60K per year. That's about what my mom as a single mom makes, and we're comfortable on it. Anything over $80K is going to make me feel rich. Guess it depends on your perspective though, and where you're living. My boyfriend's house cost his parents more than my mom's three houses combined.
 
zimmie256 said:
Nevertheless, as most of us won't make the max (or anywhere near it), you raise a very good point about the average salary reporting inflation.
Click to expand...

I would suggest that the people making the max got into the field under a different regime and that few if any will duplicate their success in the current climate. I would thus ignore those numbers, even if valid.
 
Law2Doc said:
Actually, having been a professional and having gotten many of these surveys in my career, I can assure you that the highest earners are the ones who fill this out (because others tend to be less secure about broadcasting how poorly they are doing), and there is a certain amount of exaggeration in such numbers, and thus survey evidence almost always is higher than actual.
Click to expand...
But you see, while it will skew high for the average, the very very highest earners aren't likely to fill it out. It's like when you do a survey of CEO salaries-is Steve Ballamer going to go through his junk mail and fill out a survey? Highly dubious.

Average will skew high but the max is not the max. Trust me.
 
dutchman said:
sorry guys for killing your English language, I am foreign. Just got accepted to med school and I am beginning to look at things carefully before I commit myself to this long process. I have all the information I need about work hours and legal issues, I just want to know what doctors really earn. Law2doc u say i am using too many abbreviations, but in the same sentence you use "IM" what is up with that?
4chan I don't think there is anything wrong with being motvated by money, as long as it is not your only motivation. Not everyone can come up with those magical reasons why they are going into the field. I know we hate to admit it but for most of us it is just a basic career decision.
Click to expand...

Having a love towards your career shouldn't be self motivated by money, and I personally believe it shouldn't be a reason to want to pursue a career. Loving your career, because you love the pay you recieve in return, is virtually the same as loving money.
I don't just see it in such a dark light, because it's immoral, but it is all impractical. The desire for money, at some point in one's life isn't going to be a highest priority, rather hardly a necessity.(M.D's that is)

If one of my future colleagues had told me the only reason they want to pursue their career in the medical field for solely or nearly solely money, I'm sure as hell, I'd tell him/her my standpoint. I'd ask him/her to actually improvise and suggest a better motivation or pursue another career.

I'm not sure how well your liguistics skills are, so here's an easier way to understand my view on this topic.

Money=/=Desire of pursuit towards a career.
 
Law2Doc said:
Actually, the barriers to entry in opening a medical practice in this era of insurance company domination and PCP requirements make it considerably more difficult to get into the fast lane, as compared to those who got into the field a few decades back, even with great business skills.
Click to expand...

There's barriers there now yes, but even newer docs have managed set up a successful practice. Of course I will say that luck plays a pretty big factor these days =(
 
Law2Doc said:
Um, the average is a couple hundred grand (203k according to AMSA). About half the people don't make average.
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I guess it's always made me uncomfortable when people talk about how they will barely be able to make a living as a physician (considering it's one of the higher paying vocations out there), that's all.

Again, this is all a matter of perspective, and where you choose to live, and how you choose to live.

:)

What other degree can you get that will virtually guarantee 6 figures...minimum?
 
MJB said:
I guess it's always made me uncomfortable when people talk about how they will barely be able to make a living as a physician (considering it's one of the higher paying vocations out there), that's all.

Again, this is all a matter of perspective, and where you choose to live, and how you choose to live.

:)

What other degree can you get that will virtually guarantee 6 figures...minimum?
Click to expand...

I agree with you, but you do have to take into consideration the factor of spending your 20s in school and not making decent money until your 30s (or in my case, 40s.)

Plus, there are the people who went into medicine when it really was a guarantee of the Mercedes Benz, country club, vacation home, private school for the kids way of life, and have been let down. I do have sympathy for them. After all, medicine used to be a unique way for nerds who don't have the social skills to make it in the business world to nonetheless make a lot of money. If the fiduciary rewards of medicine shrink too far, we nerds will be stuck with engineering jobs that max out at $80k while the only people willing to do medicine will be people who want to do it solely as an altruistic endeavor and women who want to do it part-time while partially relying on their husbands' full-time income.
 
MJB said:
I guess it's always made me uncomfortable when people talk about how they will barely be able to make a living as a physician (considering it's one of the higher paying vocations out there), that's all.
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I said you would be "comfortable". That's pretty different from barely able to make a living, in my book.

But it's also a far cry from the mansions, yachts and luxury cars some people seem to envision. If you have a family, a mortgage, and student loans, in a high cost of living part of the country, a low six digit salary won't have you living large.
 
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