Retinal Opthamologists Rolling in the Dough?

[277768]

---

Members do not see this ad.

That's what I heard.

Retina specialists can make money that would make any physician speechless, and salaries over 1-2M are not unusual. Any truth to this? Is a retinal fellowship a license to print money?

 

[Just Applied]

There is a big gap as to how much any physician can make. Sure if you have the perfect location and a great referal source which leads to many procedures being done, then yes you can make a lot of money. but that is with any procedure based specialty. Retinal Physicians aren't any different. On average Retinal Physicans make a little more starting out than a comprehensive Ophthalmologist.

 

[orbitsurgMD]

That's what I heard.

Retina specialists can make money that would make any physician speechless, and salaries over 1-2M are not unusual. Any truth to this? Is a retinal fellowship a license to print money?

Do you believe everything you hear?

I don't think you should.

Show me one salary offer over $1M. Better yet, show me one over $400K. Just one. (And not a department chairman's job.)

If you plow through 60 patient appointments a day and do a proportional number of imaging studies and procedures like anti-VEGF injections, lasers and bubbles and surgery, I don't doubt you could collect well over 2M annually, but the percentage for overhead for that kind of operation is high, and your take-home will be quite a bit less than that. If you want to have a patient flow that makes high volumes possible, you are going to need a lot of bodies on staff to make that possible: at least two and probably four front desk people, many technicians, preoperative counselors, probably a couple of office managers, and back office staff to handle billing, posting and collections. Then you will need accounting support, possibly IT support, dictation services, maybe an administrative assistant with secretarial skills who can handle the correspondence traffic that an operation that size demands. All that becomes pretty expensive, especially when you consider the workspace requirements and all the compliance costs that larger staffing offices need.

I don't doubt that years ago somewhere some academic or well-situated private practice retinologist cobbled together an income that exceeded $1 million, but I doubt it was on procedures alone. Academic jobs have a mix of compensation components, some from institutional salary, some from incentive schemes, some from associated institutions like the VA, some from research grants, some from publishing (probably not much), and some from business ventures not associated with direct patient care (patents, copyrights to business software, shareholder interests in companies, etc.) The same applies to private practice.

Offers of $1M. I doubt it very much. But if you can show me different, i'd like to see it.

 

[CastroViejo]

no you will probably never see anyone offer you a starting salary like that, but from talking to other private practice ophthalmologists and from other procedure oriented fields, once you get made a partner, there are practices that will make much more than the 'average' salaries you see posted on websites. $1-2 million seems to be a thing of the past, but there is really good income potential if you can build a very high patient volume while being efficient with your expenses. From the large volume practices I've seen, the amount of staff needed is exaggerated by the previous poster. Keep in mind, however, that to build that kind of high volume practice these days is very difficult. And I've heard that if you are joining a practice, many of the senior ophthalmologists (who made the $1-2 million back in the day) are making it quite difficult for young graduates to reach partner status.

Basically, I am saying that the salaries you see posted on websites do not really reflect how much retina docs or any procedure MD can make. It is not impossible to make a lot of money, but probably extremely difficult in this practice environment.

On the other hand, with all the changes in medicine that are probably about to happen, who the hell knows.

 

[orbitsurgMD]

no you will probably never see anyone offer you a starting salary like that, but from talking to other private practice ophthalmologists and from other procedure oriented fields, once you get made a partner, there are practices that will make much more than the 'average' salaries you see posted on websites. $1-2 million seems to be a thing of the past, but there is really good income potential if you can build a very high patient volume while being efficient with your expenses. From the large volume practices I've seen, the amount of staff needed is exaggerated by the previous poster. Keep in mind, however, that to build that kind of high volume practice these days is very difficult. And I've heard that if you are joining a practice, many of the senior ophthalmologists (who made the $1-2 million back in the day) are making it quite difficult for young graduates to reach partner status.

Basically, I am saying that the salaries you see posted on websites do not really reflect how much retina docs or any procedure MD can make. It is not impossible to make a lot of money, but probably extremely difficult in this practice environment.

On the other hand, with all the changes in medicine that are probably about to happen, who the hell knows.

No exaggeration. Seeing high volumes and providing adequate care requires significant staff support. I am not sure what your exposure is or what sort of practices you are familiar with, but my example is pretty accurate.

 

[Andrew_Doan]

Show me one salary offer over $1M. Better yet, show me one over $400K. Just one. (And not a department chairman's job.)

One of my good friends is entering a practice where his partners are making $1.1M/year. He's located in a state with only a handful of retina doctors.

With health care reform in the works on capital hill, it will be interesting to see what will happen to reimbursements for sub-specialists who make this kind of money. I don't anticipate this gravy train to last long. The government does not have this kind of money to continue high payouts. It is not sustainable. 🙁

 

[orbitsurgMD]

One of my good friends is entering a practice where his partners are making $1.1M/year. He's located in a state with only a handful of retina doctors.

With health care reform in the works on capital hill, it will be interesting to see what will happen to reimbursements for sub-specialists who make this kind of money. I don't anticipate this gravy train to last long. The government does not have this kind of money to continue high payouts. It is not sustainable. 🙁

If you head for South Dakota or Nebraska, you might find a reasonably underserved community where you could be busy.