I urge people to do the research. Anyone can simply post numbers and craft and manufacture numbers. Like I said the most important thing is to do the research and call large radiology firms personally. In fact, do it right now.
Professionals in the field of radiology no longer have any say, no longer have any influence, no longer have any leverage over the hospital corporation. This decline is in the works and has been in the works for some time now. The field is rife with corrupt individuals who lack any proper moral discipline. As a result, the field is suffering a great deal. As the influx of poor characters continues to inflate the ranks of members in the field of radiology, the field will continue to suffer from institutional degradation. As more and more private equity, eats away and eats away at people's salaries, it is simply no longer worth it to go into the field of radiology. Those numbers posted above are greater than what some of the world's most renown neurosurgeons make and is extraordinarily suspect. But I don't want to mock it, because I do think it's important to have debate and dialogue on this issue. I already discussed what was wrong and what was lacking in those numbers. The revenue stream provided fails to capture the reality of how a physician's contract is formulated.
Now I will grant the respondent one major caveat and capitulation: if the group OWNS the imaging equipment and we're talking about millions and millions of dollars paid to actually BUY the MRI machine (a 1-3 million dollar entity--immense capital expenditure which a medical student loan prohibits), then, IF you do your own billing and bill for the technical component (typically 5-10% of your revenue stream), then maybe you can reach those numbers--but that is just not the case anymore. But I assure you, once someone pays off the loan for such equipment, there is no inherent desire to just donate shares of the technical company aspect to you. With regards to OWNERSHIP of technical equipment (very very rare today), I will be the first to admit a fair defeat, but by and large, for 95% of members of this field 180k-250k a year is what you are looking at (In Texas, the most lucrative place in America for radiology, I'll concede, you may be paid around 275k.). And IF you do own it, in order to break even after TEN years, you have to deliver a 90% utility rate. So imagine opening up your own center, even if you are successful at marketing your enterprise, it would take TEN years for you to break even.
I just want folks to be well-informed and be well-equipped with the truth and with material on the ground facts.
There is an extraordinary lack of leadership in the field and there is an extraordinary lack of thought at the policy level in this field. Because the ranks of people in academia is being filled with grotesque and dangerous characters: racists, sexists, nationalists, drug aficionados, power mongers, non-secular ideologies--there will be an emerging collapse in this field, as we are tossed by the wayside. My colleagues in the medical and surgical fields have already caught on, and they can barely trust radiologists because of their poor character. This will occur more and more, and hospitals and private sector jobs and academic jobs will continue to pay us less and less and less.
Now the lack of leverage over hospital corporations--the result of years of institutional degradation--is what concerns me the most, as it is directly leading to unsafe and dangerous results for the patients which we dearly serve. As radiologists, our fiduciary duty is to the patient; the hospital corporation has no such duty. Yet, radiologists, through their incompetence and immaturity have relegated and forsaken this duty to the hospital corporation. Radiologists no longer have any leverage over hospital corporations--it is not uncommon for a radiologist to say that a procedure or a study was dangerous to do but that they were forced to do it by the MBA at the hospital wearing the fancy expensive suit (likely derived from imaging revenue). Go on Aunt Minnie and ask: "Have you ever done a procedure you felt was unsafe or not indicated, but were forced to do it by the hospital corporation/company?" JUST ASK IT. The decrease in salaries is related to the lack of leverage--and is related to the dilution of proper checks and balances we are experiencing--and I predict, based off a decade of experience with Hospital Admin, Chairs, Chiefs of Staff--it's going to get a hell of a lot worse. From chairs at Yale and Hopkins prosecuted by the Department of Justice for fraud to Chairs in other places who have tested positive for meth--these are the kinds of people that fill the ranks of the field of radiology. Discrimination at Stanford by way of personal experience through an aberrant abnormal interview experience.
www.justice.gov
The US Department of Justice continued its pursuit of health care fraudsters by joining a qui tam whistleblower lawsuit against
www.whistleblowersblog.org
Former University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) radiologist Marios D. Papachristou waived indictment and pleaded guilty May 3 to federal charges of healthcare fraud and illegally distributing controlled substances to non-patients, the U.S. Department of Justice has announced.
www.radiologybusiness.com
If the convicted individual in the third article was making the kind of BANK the respondent suggested, why would he need to deal drugs? And bill for it? Just think about it.
Some of these are premier university institutions convicted of major fraud and major drug abuse scandal. Just ask yourself, if you had a child, would you recommend radiology to them knowing the extent of corruption that exists in this field. My experience was just the tip of the iceberg; it's non-isolated and pervasive nature confirmed by research in the logs of the department of justice.
Certainly, there are policy measures that ought to be initiated to benefit the patient population, but leadership is adrift, aloof, without resolute situational awareness.
It is important for the medical student to be equipped with the full spectrum of the fact-pattern emerging in Radiology, and make a well-informed decision, underwritten in the truth.
