Physician pay increases in 2023 - Path is tied for 2nd lowest

[coroner]

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OK, before anyone says Medscape surveys are useless, I agree with that for the most part. On the bright side, a pay increase is better than the alternative.

https://www.beckersasc.com/leadership/physician-pay-is-increasing-in-these-21-specialties.html

 

[KeratinPearls]

2% increase is better than nothing.

Radiologists complaining about lack of increase in salary in their forum despite salaries in the 500K range.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Concerning trend: Radiology has the slowest compensation growth of any specialty

 

[WEBB PINKERTON]

I figured Psych would be in the top 5 on that list. The prospects in that field really improved in the last decade.

 

[Pathological_Liar]

Pathology getting another CMS cut in 2024:

 

[Med Director New England]

The money thing in pathology is real folks.

Even though I am past the midpoint in my career I am still fighting like crazy my salary & know from relatives / friends in medicine I am behind in salary compared to basically all other fields.

When I first started in mid 2000s my salary was so low I couldn’t afford to buy a house (starting salary was 134 K my fist year). I am in a high COLA area but still every other new physician I knew in other fields fresh out of training did not have the same difficulty buying a house.

Now 20 years later I see my peer MD friends able to afford a 2nd home, send their kids to private schools, etc - again things that are slightly out of reach for me with my current salary.

 

[octopusprime]

Such a joke. Path is such a volume game and with all the ancillary testing we do (IHC, FISH, molecular), we are low hanging fruit for easy cuts. It just gets chipped away at every single solitary year. And we have no patient satisfaction scores / 'human factor' to rely on. WTF is oncology a 13% increase?? Because the cancers they treat are harder to manage? Never mind the diagnoses for those cancers, and correctly categorizing them, becomes increasingly harder as the diagnostic & prognostic modalities require more and more input on our end.

 

[HemeOncHopeful19]

Such a joke. Path is such a volume game and with all the ancillary testing we do (IHC, FISH, molecular), we are low hanging fruit for easy cuts. It just gets chipped away at every single solitary year. And we have no patient satisfaction scores / 'human factor' to rely on. WTF is oncology a 13% increase?? Because the cancers they treat are harder to manage? Never mind the diagnoses for those cancers, and correctly categorizing them, becomes increasingly harder as the diagnostic & prognostic modalities require more and more input on our end.

If it makes you feel better I am in Onc and am not aware of any 13% increase among my peers. Maybe more like 2% like you guys

 

[octopusprime]

Sure, I mean salaries can fluctuate year to year, and that's a 13% "self reported" rate increase per the survey, but path incomes have been a downward spiral for decades for the reasons I mentioned above, along with the loss of CP billing, DRG bundled part B monies, self-inflicted underbidding for the sake of gaining volume, pod labs, abusive billing practices...god path is awful.

 

[caffeinegirl]

Pathology and radiology are both diagnostic fields with minimal/no patient contact. Why is pathology at the bottom of the barrel and radiology at the top? Something to chew on...

 

[HeyDalaron]

Pathology and radiology are both diagnostic fields with minimal/no patient contact. Why is pathology at the bottom of the barrel and radiology at the top? Something to chew on...

Low recruitment standards in pathology. That's the only reason I can come up with. It all stems from academic leadership accepting anyone into the field with a pulse.

 

[octopusprime]

And it's not like these annual decreases are the result of overutilization or abuse...even frozen sections (88331) pay less every year. We literally have zero control over those, aside form punting and NOT wanting to do them in certain cases despite being asked, and it's still a target for cuts.
Bottom line is that CMS and congress and the people with the knives value pathology's slice of the pie less and less every year. We're simply easy targets with little voice because they know we're bottom feeders.

 

[coroner]

I remember about 10 yrs ago, PC for an 88305 was around 41 bucks. Compound that with inflation, and by now one would think it "should" be around $50. Yet it's going in reverse...

If anyone takes these Medscape surveys seriously, then pay went up because we're pushing more glass, not because of insurance companies/gov't is accounting for inflation and rewarding our efforts...

 

[WEBB PINKERTON]

Instead of hoping CMS quits cutting your pay, do something about it. You can find a lot of ancillary income outside of medicine. Use the money you do have now to branch out. I'm sorry but it isn't difficult to make millions of dollars a year IF you want to.

 

[coroner]

Instead of hoping CMS quits cutting your pay, do something about it. You can find a lot of ancillary income outside of medicine. Use the money you do have now to branch out. I'm sorry but it isn't difficult to make millions of dollars a year IF you want to.

Webb is right. Even if you don't want to own a tree cutting business 🌲, tattoo removal shop 💘, or (my personal fav) a truffle pig 🐷, a physician is in a high enough income bracket where they can divest beyond stashing away their 401K (which everyone should be doing). There are tons of other opportunities e.g. real estate/REITs, franchises, ALFs/retirement homes, startups, etc. It doesn't mean quitting your day-to-day after all the years of training and student loans you've put into it, but don't count on medicine as your only fallback...

 

[Sawback3]

I don’t have time for side hustles like this while working full time with young children. Why do I need a side hustle, when a radiologist can work 35-45 hour weeks and make 150K more than me? What went wrong? It’s been discussed already, in this thread and others.

 

[KeratinPearls]

Webb is right. Even if you don't want to own a tree cutting business 🌲, tattoo removal shop 💘, or (my personal fav) a truffle pig 🐷, a physician is in a high enough income bracket where they can divest beyond stashing away their 401K (which everyone should be doing). There are tons of other opportunities e.g. real estate/REITs, franchises, ALFs/retirement homes, startups, etc. It doesn't mean quitting your day-to-day after all the years of training and student loans you've put into it, but don't count on medicine as your only fallback...

People I know get properties and rent them out. Get enough properties to provide you a second source of income. One anesthesiologist I know has a surf inn at Huntington Beach, CA which is probably worth a lot today. Another pain doc and his anesthesiology buddy (my friend) got airbnbs going but then again they make bank from gas to be able to afford these nice properties (at least 1M$).

 

[KeratinPearls]

I don’t have time for side hustles like this while working full time with young children. Why do I need a side hustle, when a radiologist can work 35-45 hour weeks and make 150K more than me? What went wrong? It’s been discussed already, in this thread and others.

Lol my friend has like 2-3 side hustles has a pathologist. Makes your typical average pathologist salary but works his butt off doing side hustles to make more money. I swear he’s going to get a stroke sooner or later. Wakes up at 3 am to start his day. Finishes his first side job and goes to his main job around 8-9 am. Finishes work at 5 pm then goes to his second side job after work.

 

[KeratinPearls]

Instead of hoping CMS quits cutting your pay, do something about it. You can find a lot of ancillary income outside of medicine. Use the money you do have now to branch out. I'm sorry but it isn't difficult to make millions of dollars a year IF you want to.

I think it’s easier said than done. Make sure your business doesn’t go out of business and you lose a lot of money. People got full time jobs as a pathologist. Any hours devoted to a side business (which is a lot) will probably lead you to a divorce or your kids not knowing who the hell you are when you come home.

I read a story on Quora about a guy who said he was so busy working that when he came home his kids were scared of him because they didn’t know who he was.

That’s really really sad.

 

[KeratinPearls]

I don’t have time for side hustles like this while working full time with young children. Why do I need a side hustle, when a radiologist can work 35-45 hour weeks and make 150K more than me? What went wrong? It’s been discussed already, in this thread and others.

There are academic practices that pay 240-250 for high volume work and taking frozen section calls at the middle of the night for transplants. This field is ugly. Not sure why people take these jobs but some people do.

One reason is that they don’t have many choices to choose from, which is unheard of in medicine. Even primary care docs have plenty of options even in bigger cities.

Some primary care docs make more than us with only three years training lol.

 

[Guest8]

Lol my friend has like 2-3 side hustles has a pathologist. Makes your typical average pathologist salary but works his butt off doing side hustles to make more money. I swear he’s going to get a stroke sooner or later. Wakes up at 3 am to start his day. Finishes his first side job and goes to his main job around 8-9 am. Finishes work at 5 pm then goes to his second side job after work.

That sounds miserable. And not worth it regardless of the extra money.

 

[octopusprime]

Yeah I mean the overall solution is not "side hustles." Maybe that's a reaction individuals can take if they have the time and resources and ability to do it. But it's not like pathology is a part time job that just allows for an additional 20 hrs/week devoted to rentals or tree cutting businesses or nail salons or any other business venture that isn't a guarantee. (fwiw my father knows quite a bit about tree cutting in his neck of the woods up north...lots of trees to be cut, and it's a good business--both from the standpoint of owning land and having it thinned every few years, and from the companies that do the cutting--but the latter is a huge investment, and you need massive amounts of equipment and manpower to compete with the established companies that do it regularly. Easier to make some money owning property and having the lumber pruned regularly, but it's not a windfall and it's partly just an investment in the land itself.)

The solution is for our fuggging work to be valued more than the cost of a McDonalds Happy Meal, and for our lazy POS end-of-career leaders to stop bending over and taking whatever CMS shoves their direction. Stop increasing residency numbers; make the work desirable by having higher standards of acceptance and less spots; stop pulling the rug out from our profession by accepting pennies on the dollar just for the volume. Have a goddamn ethic that goes beyond padding your wallet, getting yours any way you can, if you can avoid that situation. $hi+ jobs exist because there's an endless list of $hi+ people willing to take them.

 

[Med Director New England]

Yeah I mean the overall solution is not "side hustles." Maybe that's a reaction individuals can take if they have the time and resources and ability to do it. But it's not like pathology is a part time job that just allows for an additional 20 hrs/week devoted to rentals or tree cutting businesses or nail salons or any other business venture that isn't a guarantee. (fwiw my father knows quite a bit about tree cutting in his neck of the woods up north...lots of trees to be cut, and it's a good business--both from the standpoint of owning land and having it thinned every few years, and from the companies that do the cutting--but the latter is a huge investment, and you need massive amounts of equipment and manpower to compete with the established companies that do it regularly. Easier to make some money owning property and having the lumber pruned regularly, but it's not a windfall and it's partly just an investment in the land itself.)

The solution is for our fuggging work to be valued more than the cost of a McDonalds Happy Meal, and for our lazy POS end-of-career leaders to stop bending over and taking whatever CMS shoves their direction. Stop increasing residency numbers; make the work desirable by having higher standards of acceptance and less spots; stop pulling the rug out from our profession by accepting pennies on the dollar just for the volume. Have a goddamn ethic that goes beyond padding your wallet, getting yours any way you can, if you can avoid that situation. $hi+ jobs exist because there's an endless list of $hi+ people willing to take them.

About McDonald’s

Here’s the recent tictok that’s gone viral
A McDonalds combo meal costing 16 dollars

I few years back I had a GI doc offer me 15 dollars per 88305 for his endo biopsies in an in office lab.

 

[octopusprime]

Ok, twoHappy Meals, or a Double Smokey BLT meal.