The Best and Worst Paying Jobs For Doctors


 
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Journal of Medicine - The crippling student loans that burden many medical students may dissuade them from becoming family practitioners or pediatricians. Instead, foreseeing that they will owe about $140,000 in loans at graduation, they might opt to pursue more lucrative specialties like cardiology or urology.

At $178,000 for family practitioners and $183,000 for pediatricians, primary care providers earn the lowest pay of all physicians, according to a recent paper, the 2011 Review of Physician Recruiting Incentives.

That might seem like serious money, but those salaries pale in comparison a cardiologist’s $532,000 paycheck. Orthopedic surgeons make an awful lot, too. They are guaranteed an average base salary of $521,000, according to the survey data. The third highest-paying specialty: Urology. These specialists earn an average of $453,000, not including production bonuses or benefits.

Why do specialists make so much more than primary care physicians? One reason is they simply bring in more revenue per doctor.

“Wrong or right, in medicine today more value is placed on procedures than on diagnosis and preventive care,” says Travis Singleton of Merritt Hawkins. “In today’s system, you are paid less to think than you are to cut. For example, a primary care doctor who consults with a patient about her cardiovascular problems and prevents her from having a heart attack will be paid less than a cardiologist who surgically repairs the patient’s heart once it has failed.”

Medicare and other payers put specific monetary values on virtually every type of service physicians perform, Singleton says. “A primary care physician who spends 45 minutes consulting with a diabetic may be paid less than an orthopedic surgeon who spends ten minutes repairing a knee.  Even with recent efforts to pay primary care physicians more, cardiologists and other specialists still are able to generate considerably more revenue than family physicians and other primary care doctors, and hence are paid more. I think people will suggest that it costs more to develop a specialist to justify higher salaries, and to an extent that’s correct. However, the primary driver remains the revenue capacity and reimbursement.”

The disparity in pay has contributed to a declining interest in primary care and has created a serious shortage of these doctors. In the 1990s, many medical school graduates were drawn to primary care residencies, enhancing supply, but today they are mostly avoiding the field.

“The truth is that medical students—and this is common knowledge among physicians—have long been deterred from going into primary care not only for economic reasons but for reasons connected to professional prestige,” Singleton says. “Many primary care physicians have told us that during medical school they were counseled by their professors to go into a medical specialty rather than into primary care, because the ‘best students’ specialize.”

The nationwide shortage of primary care doctors is so great that the health reform law increases Medicare reimbursements for primary care doctors by 10%, as an incentive to persuade medical students to choose primary care, Singleton says. “We doubt that 10% will be enough to move the needle, though in the last couple of years the number of medical school graduates selecting primary care residencies has increased somewhat.”

Despite predictions of a shortage of 35,000 to 40,000 primary care physicians by 2025, things may be slowly picking up.

“Attracting medical students into family medicine has shown small but continued growth over the last two years, Singleton says. “We are seeing more medical students choosing family medicine, and the number of family medicine residency training positions grew by 100 in 2011. Much of that interest has been attributed to the discussion and recognition of primary care as foundational for health care reform.”


Copyright 2011- National College of Physicians (NCNP.ORG)-All Rights Reserved


 
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COMMENTS

  • Thank you very much on the advice you have given .NOW I know what type of medicine I want to choose in future as a secondary student........

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