Pay for academic EM

[NinerNiner999]

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Hey gang... I have a new question for everyone out there regarding EM reimbursement. My PD has been suggesting that academic EM attendings make more than community attendings, but I haven't yet heard the specifics. Can anyone out there think of how this could be the case? Do research grants and benefits contribute a significant amount of take-home above base salary? How, when an average starting salary of 200-225k in the community exists, can academic docs make more?

 

[southerndoc]

The academic EM docs I know make $120 (yes 120) to $185k per year.

Usually they have better benefits (40k/yr retirement funds, more travel expenses, less clinical shifts, etc.)

 

[docB]

In general it is not true that academics make more than community docs. Some PDs have been known to stretch their definitions of compensation. An academic (just like southerndoc said) will work less clinical hours, can make money on grants and often make more speaking for drug companies and conferences. With the better benefits you could make an argument that some academics make more per hour in adjusted compensation than community docs but it's a stretch.

 

[beriberi]

I heard a story about a doc (a gas resident's friend's friend) who worked at a non-academic hospital that had EM residents rotating through on a regular basis. He was making 800K per year because he was signing a zillion charts per shift, billing for all of the work and procedures on the charts (including for the residents he was supervising). So maybe (by my fourthhand anecdote) that is how it can be done--though supervising residents without an academic center liability policy sounds scary.

 

[beyond all hope]

Any doc can have outside sources of income. Academic docs tend to have more prestige and are more often asked to speak for drug companies, be a consultant, get big grants for research, etc.

The big money is not in seeing patients. It's in having someone else see patients for you (as the poster below stated), consulting, patents and other outside sources of revenue.

 

[bcrosspac]

At my program, the EM Academic Attendings are not allowed to moonlight anywhere else. I do not know if that applies to speaking on behalf of drug companies, etc or any other forms of renumeration. I assume that most attendings who choose academia vs. community do not do it for the "incredible" reimbursement.

 

[colforbinMD]

I would also hazard to guess that Academic pay at JHU is also a bit skewed from many other Academic centers in the country. Just a thought from a local Md boy.

 

[aliraja]

drkp - i'd agree with you... but i think that it's probably skewed the other direction. big name med places like harvard and jhu can afford to pay their academic folks LESS due to the demand for positions there. one of my OB friends just started as an associate prof up at harvard and was talking about how much more he could have made everywhere else due to the fact that they simply didn't have to pay him that much money - there were tons of other people who would have taken the job if he had turned it down.

 

[EMIMG]

The other thing is that many academic department have stipulations in the contract that you cannot moonlight unless you have departmental chair permission. Furthermore, some places will allow you to obtain income via other means (such as consulting, speakiing); however, they have it in your contract that you can only keep X percent of your total salary and anything over that needs to go to the department.

I think that many people that do academics realize that there is less salary involved with it; however, there are other benefits such as being able to help current and future physicians.

Speaking of compensation, I know there have been studies indicating that EM physicians that then do a fellowship tend to get paid less than their non-fellowship trained counterparts. However, this may be a skewed sample as most that have done fellowships will probably be in an academic setting who get paid less than those in community settings.

The other thing that really depends upon your salary is reimbursement. And, many academic centers are in areas where there is a lot of uninsured and underinsured and therefore the reimbursement is much lower.