Salary/Income question

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GypsyHummus

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hey everyone,

So I'm doing research into lots of different healthcare fields right now and finally got to podiatry. One question i had was in the salary/expected income of pods. Ive done many searches and it seems that there is a wide range of numbers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics place podiatrists making around 120k/year, which seems a bit low for a physician who does surgery http://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/podiatrists.htm. I figure I would start my search here because its a governmental website and its hard to hide income figures from Uncle Sam. Do these figures also include resident podiatrists that make 40-60k/year? Is it also including unemployed and/or part time pods?

I also took a look at monster salary.com for pod salary in my area. The results showed a higher income of around 150K, but still rather low for a surgical specialty.

I also have family that are podiatrists and they said the starting offer they received from their residency hospital was 70K.

Finally, I read around on here and it seems that pods are making the big bucks, looking at 200K+ starting.

So I ask those who have done the research as well, what is the conclusion?

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Never heard of someone starting at 200k unless you're in underderserved. Depends on a lot of the usual factors such as saturation/politics/modality.

Most liked advice I've seen on resident forums: "Move to where the money is".

Hospitals offer base salary with not much room increasing ceiling but great benefits.

Private practice more based on amount you can pump out. Not to mention option to buy in.

If you're curious, run through the physicians residents thread. Lots on there. Don't comment. Just observe. I've seen you on these threads as well as pre allo/pharm before. Look and dig it up first.

DPM is also not considered a surgical specialty like MD/DO is. Hard to get the hospital to route you emergency surg or rear ankle foot cases when ortho takes a majority of them. You're looking at mostly wound care/ elective forefoot surgery.
 
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Never heard of someone starting at 200k unless you're in underderserved. Depends on a lot of the usual factors such as saturation/politics/modality.

Most liked advice I've seen on resident forums: "Move to where the money is".

Hospitals offer base salary with not much room increasing ceiling but great benefits.

Private practice more based on amount you can pump out. Not to mention option to buy in.

If you're curious, run through the physicians residents thread. Lots on there. Don't comment. Just observe. I've seen you on these threads as well as pre allo/pharm before. Look and dig it up first.

DPM is also not considered a surgical specialty like MD/DO is. Hard to get the hospital to route you emergency surg or rear ankle foot cases when ortho takes a majority of them. You're looking at mostly wound care/ elective forefoot surgery.

Could reconstructive ankle surgery be a reasonable goal for a podiatrist at a rural hospital? I think ankle surgery would be pretty cool
 
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Its actually pretty scary to see some of the numbers on those threads.

All I can contribute is the DPM I shadowed hardly did any surgeries and made 175K a year in a private practice.

Another makes 400 K in private practice

And according to them, the guys at Kaiser make 200K.

I really hope the salaries arent as low as some of those posts.
 
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Could reconstructive ankle surgery be a reasonable goal for a podiatrist at a rural hospital? I think ankle surgery would be pretty cool

Yes.

There was a thread mentioning DPMs doing TARS (total ankle replacement surgery).

One of the posters had corresponding codes/RVUs of TARS versus some regular procedures + labs.

Based on number of patients alone, you could see why none surgical could make more than a few ankle replacements.
They also brought in factors like when you're rounding post op or travelling from hospital to another, you can't bill for those hours.

So money wise it really depends. Number of patients- RVU per procedure- time spent postop you can't bill for.

That's not to say you can't be financially successful performing ankle replacements. You'd just have to deal with other factors like the ortho department turf war, shelling out the money and surg cases to get certified, and fighting hospital admin to give you privileges and send you those cases instead of ortho. These factors will vary in difficulty pending location, politics, saturation, so on so on. Some pods in the residency thread had no problem getting priveleges and cases. Some had to fight tooth and nail for it or show extensive proof, surgical skill, and previous case load before they were allowed to do it.
If you're in private practice or multi-specialty you may get more leeway and volume with those cases.

I'm a pre-pod and I don't know s*** so don't take my word though haha. I'll look back in 6 years and probably think I was talking out of my ass.
 
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Never heard of someone starting at 200k unless you're in underderserved. Depends on a lot of the usual factors such as saturation/politics/modality.

...

DPM is also not considered a surgical specialty like MD/DO is. Hard to get the hospital to route you emergency surg or rear ankle foot cases when ortho takes a majority of them. You're looking at mostly wound care/ elective forefoot surgery.

Pretty much every hospital in the country will start you over $200k assuming they have a base salary with RVU bonus type contract. Once you hit the number of RVUs that puts you in the same percentile as your salary (usually using MGMA #s), then you start bonusing at some dollar amount per RVU. Some hospital systems will pay almost strictly on production (RVUs), though I imagine there has to be some sort of base salary at least starting out.

What you are referred can vary. At my hospital system podiatry is the foot and ankle service within the ortho department, so outside of some polytrauma that the ortho guys hold on to, everything comes to podiatry.

A successful group practice should have their top producers bringing in upwards of ~$800k in gross collections, overhead should be running around 50%, meaning $400k before taxes, but also before any profit sharing off of ancillary revenue streams. Especially with today's training, podiatrist have no excuse not to do very well financially, even in today's healthcare climate.
 
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Pretty much every hospital in the country will start you over $200k assuming they have a base salary with RVU bonus type contract. Once you hit the number of RVUs that puts you in the same percentile as your salary (usually using MGMA #s), then you start bonusing at some dollar amount per RVU. Some hospital systems will pay almost strictly on production (RVUs), though I imagine there has to be some sort of base salary at least starting out.

What you are referred can vary. At my hospital system podiatry is the foot and ankle service within the ortho department, so outside of some polytrauma that the ortho guys hold on to, everything comes to podiatry.

A successful group practice should have their top producers bringing in upwards of ~$800k in gross collections, overhead should be running around 50%, meaning $400k before taxes, but also before any profit sharing off of ancillary revenue streams. Especially with today's training, podiatrist have no excuse not to do very well financially, even in today's healthcare climate.

Extremely helpful. Thank you. Mind-blowing amount of money where I'm coming from.
 
Pretty much every hospital in the country will start you over $200k assuming they have a base salary with RVU bonus type contract. Once you hit the number of RVUs that puts you in the same percentile as your salary (usually using MGMA #s), then you start bonusing at some dollar amount per RVU. Some hospital systems will pay almost strictly on production (RVUs), though I imagine there has to be some sort of base salary at least starting out.

What you are referred can vary. At my hospital system podiatry is the foot and ankle service within the ortho department, so outside of some polytrauma that the ortho guys hold on to, everything comes to podiatry.

A successful group practice should have their top producers bringing in upwards of ~$800k in gross collections, overhead should be running around 50%, meaning $400k before taxes, but also before any profit sharing off of ancillary revenue streams. Especially with today's training, podiatrist have no excuse not to do very well financially, even in today's healthcare climate.

Thanks for the reply.

Why are the salaries on the BLS.gov so low then? 120k is a far off number from 200K.

Not that I would be upset with a 120K/year salary.

I think my cousin is making that right now. She says she makes 10K/month before taxes, and I don't see her as having a reason to lie about her salary. She did say she got an offer for 70K, which she promptly turned down.
 
Thanks for the reply.

Why are the salaries on the BLS.gov so low then? 120k is a far off number from 200K.

Not that I would be upset with a 120K/year salary.

I think my cousin is making that right now. She says she makes 10K/month before taxes, and I don't see her as having a reason to lie about her salary. She did say she got an offer for 70K, which she promptly turned down.

Not sure who or how many DPMs the gov is surveying, or what the survey asks. I don't know anyone who's ever done one. Maybe that figure is supposed to be closer to take home pay after taxes?

Starting with a base salary of around $100k coming out of residency and working for a podiatry group is fine. That's pretty dang normal. You should have some sort of bonus structure where you make a % of your collections once you've hit a certain multiplier of your base. Or maybe you get a smaller % but start earning from the first dollar you bring in. Either way, you should make more than your base even your first year out, if you don't either the practice really wasn't ready to hire or you are lazy. Of course hospitals can afford to pay you more right off the bat because you bring in a lot more money than just what you collect seeing and treating patients. Do a surgery in their OR, they are making money. Send someone to PT, they making money. Order a CT or MRI, they still making money. So even if your collections alone don't support your salary, the ancillary revenue you provide to the hospital does.

The real moral of the story is that well trained podiatrist with busy and well rounded practices make plenty of money. More than a lot of medical specialties.
 
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Not sure who or how many DPMs the gov is surveying, or what the survey asks. I don't know anyone who's ever done one. Maybe that figure is supposed to be closer to take home pay after taxes?

Starting with a base salary of around $100k coming out of residency and working for a podiatry group is fine. That's pretty dang normal. You should have some sort of bonus structure where you make a % of your collections once you've hit a certain multiplier of your base. Or maybe you get a smaller % but start earning from the first dollar you bring in. Either way, you should make more than your base even your first year out, if you don't either the practice really wasn't ready to hire or you are lazy. Of course hospitals can afford to pay you more right off the bat because you bring in a lot more money than just what you collect seeing and treating patients. Do a surgery in their OR, they are making money. Send someone to PT, they making money. Order a CT or MRI, they still making money. So even if your collections alone don't support your salary, the ancillary revenue you provide to the hospital does.

The real moral of the story is that well trained podiatrist with busy and well rounded practices make plenty of money. More than a lot of medical specialties.

Why don't podiatrists make as much as others in the health profession? Even some of the non surgical medical specialties make 100k more in comparison

Im looking at salary figures for hospitalists and the like, it looks like someone can expect 200K. Family medicine 180K. Peds at the lower end at 130K.
 
Not sure who or how many DPMs the gov is surveying, or what the survey asks. I don't know anyone who's ever done one. Maybe that figure is supposed to be closer to take home pay after taxes?

Starting with a base salary of around $100k coming out of residency and working for a podiatry group is fine. That's pretty dang normal. You should have some sort of bonus structure where you make a % of your collections once you've hit a certain multiplier of your base. Or maybe you get a smaller % but start earning from the first dollar you bring in. Either way, you should make more than your base even your first year out, if you don't either the practice really wasn't ready to hire or you are lazy. Of course hospitals can afford to pay you more right off the bat because you bring in a lot more money than just what you collect seeing and treating patients. Do a surgery in their OR, they are making money. Send someone to PT, they making money. Order a CT or MRI, they still making money. So even if your collections alone don't support your salary, the ancillary revenue you provide to the hospital does.

The real moral of the story is that well trained podiatrist with busy and well rounded practices make plenty of money. More than a lot of medical specialties.

So ill be honest with you. Youve made things pretty clear. How possible is it for a podiatrist to hit above the 200 range. like 250-300.
And how available are jobs. I typed in podiatrist jobs and they seemed really scattered.
 
Unfortunately it's a bit deceiving to think that if you do surgery then you'll make more money. I've had a podiatrist I've shadowed tell me that surgery isn't always the most profitable unless have a steady stream of work. He said Obama Care cut the profit from surgeries quite a bit. But from monster salary .com the median salary in my area is around $190k so maybe the government website included podiatrists in residency. In my area only 10% of podiatrists make ~$120k a year and the 90th percentile makes ~$300k
 
Unfortunately it's a bit deceiving to think that if you do surgery then you'll make more money. I've had a podiatrist I've shadowed tell me that surgery isn't always the most profitable unless have a steady stream of work. He said Obama Care cut the profit from surgeries quite a bit. But from monster salary .com the median salary in my area is around $190k so maybe the government website included podiatrists in residency. In my area only 10% of podiatrists make ~$120k a year and the 90th percentile makes ~$300k
I don't know that ObamaCare made surgery less profitable so much as it made elective cases less likely to happen due to higher deductibles. The reimbursements for surgery have been declining for quite a while.

Like you said, surgery isn't always the most profitable thing because of the 90 day global period, but it really depends on what you would be doing instead of surgery. If you would have been cutting some toenails, you probably would make more money doing the surgery. Just as an example, Medicare pays something like $500 for a bunionectomy. You would need to cut a lot of toenails to make that much (at something like $40 a patient). If you have a full day of cases, you can make a decent amount doing surgery, even counting in the follow-up, which is included in the initial payment for the surgery.
 
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I don't know that ObamaCare made surgery less profitable so much as it made elective cases less likely to happen due to higher deductibles. The reimbursements for surgery have been declining for quite a while.

Like you said, surgery isn't always the most profitable thing because of the 90 day global period, but it really depends on what you would be doing instead of surgery. If you would have been cutting some toenails, you probably would make more money doing the surgery. Just as an example, Medicare pays something like $500 for a bunionectomy. You would need to cut a lot of toenails to make that much (at something like $40 a patient). If you have a full day of cases, you can make a decent amount doing surgery, even counting in the follow-up, which is included in the initial payment for the surgery.

Well I'm just repeating what I was told... but yea I've been told by multiple podiatrists that business wise it's all about finding your niche that gives you a consistent stream of work.
 
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