resident vs fellow pay

[minterr]

I was perusing a residency website and saw that the residents get paid anywhere from 45K to 50K depending on their level (R2, R3, R4, etc). but the fellows pay was listed as 30K to 40K! why do fellows get paid less?

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[Pinkertinkle]

Cuz they're not ACGME fellowships and thus its up to the program to pay however much they want to pay.

 

[Pastrami King]

Cuz they're not ACGME fellowships and thus its up to the program to pay however much they want to pay.

Some programs pay with AIG stock.

 

[Wolverine98]

It varies depending on where you train. At some places, fellowships will pay whatever they can get away with (often in teh $30-40k range). One of the people where I work had even been offered $0 for a 2 year oculoplastics fellowship; she would just have had the honor of doing that fellowship.

Other places will pay based on the PGY year, so it continues to scale up during the fellowship; i.e., in your first year of fellowship, you'd be paid the same as a 5th year resident in ortho or neurosurgery.

 

[Mirror Form]

Two Reasons:

1. Hospitals get paid something like 100k per year by the government to train each resident. But most fellowships are not funded by medicaire, so they get paid less.

2. Fellows can theoretically moonlight to feed their family.

 

[orbitsurgMD]

Some programs pay with AIG stock.

Better than swaps.


Fellows often get paid proportionally to what they can earn to support their position. If you cover call or staff a resident clinic, and you are on staff at the center where you are doing the fellowship, generally they can bill insurers and Medicare under your name and recoup funds to support your fellowship. Otherwise, you are at the mercy of the local institution's generosity. If someone has a grant, sometimes there are ways to cover part of your salary with that.

CMS does not support fellowships as they do residencies, so any funding of fellow salaries has to come from locally-generated income.

 

[Visionary]

Two Reasons:

1. Hospitals get paid something like 100k per year by the government to train each resident. But most fellowships are not funded by medicaire, so they get paid less.

2. Fellows can theoretically moonlight to feed their family.

Yeah, most fellowships are paid for mainly by the faculty, either through their clinical or grant revenue. Departments give little, if any, and there is no govt funding, as has been stated.

Of course, most fellowships do not allow, or strongly discourage, moonlighting. After all, you only have 1-2 yrs to "master" your subspecialty.

The high-earning subspecialties (plastics and retina) also know you'll recoup any salary losses through an increase in future earnings. There's no real motivation to pay you more.

In short, if you want to pursue a fellowship, don't focus on the 1-2 yr salary. If you land one of the better-paying fellowships, good for you. If you don't... Moonlight if you can. Take out loans, if you need to support your family (though the current state of the economy may restrict you to running up credit card debt). Lower your standard of living for a time. But, follow your passion. You'll make enough to be comfortable in the long run, and you'll enjoy doing it.

I've taken out 20K in loans this year, but I'm not batting an eyelash. I'm doing what I love. 😀