How Much Do Doctors Make? Takeaways from Doximity’s First Annual Physician Compensation Report

Updated on August 10th, 2017
7

Physicians and non-physicians alike are curious about doctors’ salaries. Information on physician salaries is scattered, with the MGMA survey being the most widely-cited compensation survey. However, it can be difficult to get your hands on the MGMA numbers. There is anecdotal information on physician forums such as Student Doctor Network, but those numbers are hardly scientific.

Doximity’s First Annual Physician Compensation Report

Doximity is the largest physician-specific social network. According to their website, over 70% of U.S. physicians have an account with Doximity. The company has been asking physicians since 2014 to share their salaries. Doximity displays the results on a salary map, where you can look up the average salaries in your specialty by county.

You cannot look at the salary map unless you input your own salary information into the database. This entices more physicians to input their salary information, improving the quality of the database.

As a result, they have been able to compile 36,000 physician responses to their salary survey. In April 2017, they published their First Annual Physician Compensation Report, summarizing the results of their salary database.

I encourage my physician readers to read the report. You do need to be a Doximity member to read the report (you don’t have to contribute your own salary for access) For my non-physician readers, here is the press release of the report from Doximity.

Takeaways From The Report

Doctors are paid well

Every specialty in the survey had an average salary of greater than $200,000. According to this calculator, the average doctor in the lowest paying specialty would still be in the 98% percentile of American workers with respect to salary.

I get it, the average American worker doesn’t have $250,000 or more in student loans. The average American worker doesn’t spend four years in college and four years in medical school. And certainly, the average American worker doesn’t get beaten to a pulp for 3-7 years during residency or fellowship. But the money at the end of the tunnel is still pretty good, no matter which specialty you choose.

Surgical specialties dominate the rankings of the highest-paid specialties

Not surprisingly, surgical specialties are the highest-paid fields, taking the top 4 spots in the rankings. Many of the other specialties in the top 10 are procedure-heavy, including cardiology, dermatology, and gastroenterology. While the U.S. healthcare system is working its way towards quality-based compensation rather than quantity-based compensation, for now, procedure-based specialties still pay.

It does not pay to be a pediatric subspecialist

On the other end of the spectrum, pediatric subspecialists have the lowest average incomes. The five lowest-paying specialties were pediatric subspecialties. Each of them paid less on average than general pediatrics.

Mind the (gender pay) gap

Doximity’s salary database confirms a well-known phenomenon in other professions: male workers make more on average than female workers. In general, some of the gender pay gap can be attributed to various factors, including:

  • Female physicians are on average younger than male physicians, given the steady increase in female medical student enrollment over the past 40 years
  • Female physicians are more likely to work part-time
  • Female physicians are less likely to specialize in the highest-paid procedural specialties (i.e. surgery) and more likely to specialize in the lowest-paid specialties (pediatrics)

However, according to Doximity’s methodology, they controlled for each of these confounding factors. So why such a large gender pay gap? I’m not sure. Neither does Doximity, who states that it is “beyond our scope to speculate on causation of this effect.”

It pays to work in rural settings

From Doximity’s press release:

Interestingly, rural and lower cost cities tended to have higher physician compensation than higher cost areas, such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago.

While this may be surprising to Doximity, I’m sure this is no surprise to most readers of this or other physician finance blogs. The concept of geographic arbitrage is well-known, where you can get higher pay by working in lower cost-of-living areas. In New York or San Francisco on the other hand, being a doctor may make you feel like you are just scraping by.

The lowest paying metro areas have a high concentration of academic hospitals

Doximity ranked the highest and lowest paying metropolitan areas. The two lowest metropolitan areas were Durham, NC and Ann Arbor, MI. This makes sense, since these two metro areas are dominated by major academic hospitals (Duke/UNC and University of Michigan, respectively). Do a quick search of the salary database of the University of North Carolina and the University of Michigan and Doximity’s results will make sense.

Conclusion

Doximity’s Physician Compensation Report is a great summary of physician compensation in the United States. Their numbers roughly correlate with those published in other salary surveys. It mostly confirms most of what we know about physician compensation: surgical and procedural specialties pay more than primary care and pediatric subspecialties, academics pays less than private practice, rural practices pay more than urban practices, and a gender pay gap exists in medicine.

What do you think? Did any of the numbers in Doximity’s salary survey surprise you? What did you take away from their results?

7 COMMENTS

  1. It’s nice to be a Cardiologist in a rural like setting (well I am an hour from San Fran so cost of living is still steep).

    I always like seeing these round ups from Doximity and other sites, but it is the same each year. Don’t do pediatrics if you want to be rich. Move to the rural areas and preferably the mid-west or south. Do procedures. I suspect the gender gap will improve as more women go into leadership rules at the hospitals.

  2. It’s funny, even though I never saw a published report like this during med school, we all knew most of these things as we chose specialties- it pays to subspecialize in surgery and not so much in peds. I was a little surprised to hear that pediatric subspecialties were paid less. Now it makes sense why I know so many pediatric residents who decided to switch into anesthesia instead of doing a 3 year fellowship in a pediatric subspecialty.

  3. I have always kept an eye on such salary surveys. Having said that, private practice, especially in a rural/suburb location, could earn physicians even in lower paying specialties a higher salary. I know a pediatrician in my local area earning salary in the 300-400K range annually. I working a few extra shifts per year, earned over 500K the past 3 years and have hit that as of my November salary. http://foreignbornmd.com/2017/11/05/earning-500k-as-an-internist/

  4. […] These next two articles take a look at the elusive physician's salary – a number that can vary greatly depending not only on your specialty, but also where you live. For those curious, Wall Street Physician shares some of these numbers in “How Much Do Doctors Make? Takeaways from Doximity's First Annual Physician Compensation Repo… […]

  5. My name is Tom Peacock from USA, I want to say thank you to Dr Emu for the good thing he has done for me, Though am not sure if this is the best forum to show my joy and happiness for what he has done for me but i can’t hide my happiness and my joy so i have to share it with people, my marriage got crashed about two years ago and i tried all i could within my power but to no avail. I saw a post and testimonial about the good things Dr Emu has been doing so I decided to give it a try. though he is always a busy man but when he responded back to my email, he gave me 48 hours for my marriage to be restored really just like he said my marriage was restored since then I am happy and i am living happily i am so grateful to Dr Emu you can always email him here: {emutemple@gmail.com} or WhatsApp: {+2347012841542}

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here