From what I’ve seen in some friends the starting for a true private group was a little lower. Obviously the hope is that eventually they can be a “partner” and/or share in other sources of income that the group has.
For a hospital employed position you may start at a higher base salary and then just be on a production/RVU model or base salary plus RVU bonus model with generally not much growth up unless you take on paying admin/leadership roles.
There are lots of private groups out there. As a new grad, you have to be careful what you're joining. Some may say for sure partnership in x amount of time and you'll easily double triple yr salary. Money doesn't grow on trees, and just because you become "partners" does not automatically equal more money. You have to earn it, either increasing your productivity, investing in some portion of the buisness, and reaping the benefits from it as passive income (i.e. invest in a nuclear camera, invest in ECHO's, invest in the business). Essentially it becomes an investment, not very much differ than if I were to invest in stocks per se. So technically, in my opinion, it is not really your salary from work, but more so generating interest from your investments of your work. As with all investments, there are huge ups and downs, and you have to be ready for the downs, when things are not going well, employees quitting, employees complaining, employees stealing, hospital administration moving more towards hospital employed, hospital potentially buying your practice, selling off your practice to somebody else, employees or partners quitting, junior partners quitting..etc... the list goes on. You can lose money as partners as well (just like investments). In addition, you have to take into account that many do not become partners, or the group makes it very hard to become partners (it may not be evident when you interview), and that the senior partners take advantage of new grads so they reap most of the monetary benefits. Also, a lot of people say as a private practice I can do whatever I want, nobody to tell me my schedule. That is not true, you still have to follow the norms, what the hospital wants from you. If a hospital is not happy with your group's performance, they can easily push the group out. Also, many private practice has to round on 2-4 hospital systems. I think this is so inefficient way of patient care. Imagine rounding on 3 patients in one hospital, 2 patients in another, and 1 in another, and while you are at another hospital, a family member wants to talk to you, a nurse wants to talk to you.. etc.. It is a very inefficient way of work. Iam not saying it is all doom, but one has to take into consideration all of this, rather than just say.. o yea I want private practice because I want to make tons of $$$$. I trained in a hospital employed model where one cardiologist rounds on the whole hospital for the weekend (15-30 pts), and it is much much more efficient this way. Remember.. efficiency = $$. Regarding growth of private practice, I believe it is probably actually harder for growth in private practice if you want to be administrator or have influence at a hospital. Yes, you can become a partner, and own the practice, but for you to become a hospital administrator, the hospital has the final say, not your group. If a hospital is more favoring their own hospital employed physicians, they will unlikely select you to be an admin over their own.
Hospital employed has its issues too, but in my experience is generally more stable. You may not have as much autonomy, and are more dictated by what the hospital wants from you, however, benefits are generally better (disability, 401k matching, insurance, holiday time off). It is true that hopsital employed generally has higher starting salary, and peak generally less than a WELL RUN private practice. Keep in mind the "WELL RUN", as there are many private practice that are not well run. However, as mentioned above, alot of income from private practice is in your investment into yourself, thus technically, if I take my money from my hospital employed job, and invest it in stocks, I may generate the similar monetary values if not more, but without the headaches of running a buisness (i.e. private practice). I personally know hospital employed cardilogist making > 7 figures, a few > 2 million, so the notion that private practice makes more is not always true.
I personally would like to keep my money I generate from work separate from investments, and once I come home from work, I don't want to worry about work, and spend time with my family without worrying about the nuance of running a business, thus I believe for me hospital employed is a better for me.
