A quick follow-up on my earlier post on physician compensation. AMN, which helps recruit physicians, has issued a release on changes in starting compensation and hiring incentives for doctors. The numbers are revealing in terms of understanding why health care is expensive in the US. Recall that this is what the doctors are paid; the organizations, especially hospitals, billing for a physician’s services mark up that compensation tremendously, so the bills reflect multiples of the actual pay to the doctor for delivering care. And this report is basically starting pay, those who have been with an organization for multiple years are likely earning much more. But these are not necessarily doctors right out of medical school, probably includes position switchers. (AMN Release)
Average starting pay was $419,000. Gastroenterologists had the highest starting pay at $654,000. Urologists had the largest increase in starting pay, 22.5%. Interestingly, orthopedists actually had a 12% decrease in starting pay, but for most specialties there was a big jump in starting pay from last year’s levels. The vast majority of physician searches were to hire specialists, but the single most common search was for nurse practitioners, then family medicine doctors, followed by a number of specialties. Hospitals were the biggest single source of job searches, followed by academic medical centers and group practices.
Despite attempts to move physicians to methods of compensation that don’t encourage utilization and reward quality, most doctors are still paid with some element of productivity, or how many services do you bill for. Most physicians also receive a signing bonus, an average of around $50,000, up dramatically from last year. Relocation assistance was common, as was payment for continuing medical education requirements. Some positions also offered educational loan repayment assistance.
Again, I am not critical of physician pay, but it is an important factor in our high and rapidly growing health care spending. Hard to address that spending if you don’t do something about hospital prices and clinician pay.
