Salaries are dropping

[drboris]

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Hi everyone,

I know that most of us are going into medicine for many reasons other than the obvious financial security...so I wanted to share some observations. I just happened to be browsing salary.com and I noticed that the salaries for most physicians have dropped again as of June 2004. Yes, they still make enough and are not poor (even with all their loans), however it is just a little disheartening to me. It seems that in order to make 200k plus, we have to go into rads, ER, or some surgical specialty. All of the medicine subspecialties get paid a very small fraction compared to their surgical colleagues.

Anybody else worried that salaries may keep on going down?

 

[Mirror Form]

Hi everyone,

I know that most of us are going into medicine for many reasons other than the obvious financial security...so I wanted to share some observations. I just happened to be browsing salary.com and I noticed that the salaries for most physicians have dropped again as of June 2004. Yes, they still make enough and are not poor (even with all their loans), however it is just a little disheartening to me. It seems that in order to make 200k plus, we have to go into rads, ER, or some surgical specialty. All of the medicine subspecialties get paid a very small fraction compared to their surgical colleagues.

Anybody else worried that salaries may keep on going down?

If you go into IM and don't specialize, do family practice, or peds, etc, then you won't make that much. But it's not at all difficult to make over 200k in many areas of medicine, and not even the competitive ones. For example, pathologists can easily make around 200k by working 45 hours per week. I don't know a single general surgeon that makes less then 200k (if they did, they'd most likely be quickly recruited by another hospital), and subspecialties make even more. Time aren't as good as the 80's, but they're not that bad either.

 

[hans19]

True. When adjusted for inflation physician salaries have decreased. For clinically oriented specialties, IE those that see patients, your salary will be affected by a variety of factors.

1) Number of hours you are willing to work. The more you work the more you make.

2) Smaller/'less desirable' towns have a greater demand and TEND to pay more than larger/desirable. With the following caveat:

3) Payor demographic determines your collection ratio. If you serve an area or have clientele that have insurance, you can expect to be reimbursed more than if you have mostly medicare, -caid, or self-pay patients. With the following caveat:

4) Depends on what kind of insurance your pts have. Some HMOs are stingy and down-code for procedures and have used bundling to not reimburse you for all services rendered.

Therefore, if you practice in a rural area where few have good insurance you will end up doing a lot of pro-bono work. If you work in a suburb of a large metro area, and your pts all have good insurance, you can expect to do better.

But in general, smaller towns have greater demand and greater reimbursement.

-Hans