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Salaries by Specialty


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Can anyone tell me in general how much ophthalmologists make? The one I work for has an academic appointment and he told me he makes a lot less than his colleagues doing lasik...but the amount can't be too bad right?

 

Depends what you do and where you are in your career and where you work.

 

My opthal friend, fresh out of fellowship, doing retina, billed just over 300K his first year. He had huge overhead though (just buying his laser cost over 80K).

 

When you're established (meaning you've established yourself in the community, have good relationship with family docs, who will refer to you), you can rake in a million or more in billings. I always hear, however, that ophthals have huge overhead, so their net income may be a lot less than that. Of course, having your own lasik clinic will easily make you extremely wealthy, but most who start out will not be starting their own business because they have no capital, unless an opportunity arises.

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Depends what you do and where you are in your career and where you work.

 

My opthal friend, fresh out of fellowship, doing retina, billed just over 300K his first year. He had huge overhead though (just buying his laser cost over 80K).

 

When you're established (meaning you've established yourself in the community, have good relationship with family docs, who will refer to you), you can rake in a million or more in billings. I always hear, however, that ophthals have huge overhead, so their net income may be a lot less than that. Of course, having your own lasik clinic will easily make you extremely wealthy, but most who start out will not be starting their own business because they have no capital, unless an opportunity arises.

 

Moo, thanks again for sharing your wealth of knowledge.

 

That's really interesting because he works in a hospital most of the time and maybe 20% dedicated to research and teaching. But because he doesn't own any of his equipment (I'm assuming it's the hospitals) shouldn't he be pocketing a bit more? :S

 

I'm just confused on how he bills patients/surgeries perhaps. He's a fantastic guy, great with all his patients and the topic of salary came up over lunch, just wanted to learn a bit more.

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Sorry, but this has nothing to do with being lazy.... and proves my point.

 

Seeing 50 patients in 8 hours is efficient. Absolutely.

But what kind of care are you providing?

Seeing 50-70 patients a day is easy in ortho clinics, ENT clinics etc. where the patients are coming with one problem.

 

I'm sure moo and others will disagree with me, but trying to maintain this type of schedule in family practice means you are probably not evaluating/treating your patients adequately.

 

Depends on what your appointments are. On my last day of rural family medicine, I saw 62 patients in 8 hours (my preceptor saw 3 additional, time-consuming cases like breaking bad news, suicidal pt, etc). If you aren't doing full physicals or initial psych assessments, it's not impossible. I'd say that a good 20-25 patients were either in for simple refills or basic follow-up (e.g. for recent BP med adjustments), which takes from 30 seconds to maybe 5 minutes total per appt.

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I know, but I just find it funny (and sad) that once people get into med school they lose all sense of what a good salary is....

 

Yes, after 8-10+ years of training we are entitled to healthy compensation....

 

But seriously, for those with non-doctor parents, how many of them have a COMBINED salary anywhere near 250K???

 

If you know how to manage your money properly and don't need a Jay Leno car collection, then that kind of money can get you the nice car, nice house, etc etc etc....

 

You may have to settle for a BMW instead of a Bentley. Life is tough.

 

In wrestling they have different weight categories for competitions. Physicians shouldn't be competing or comparing with most other ordinary citizens. In today's capitalist society I would rate physicians as

within the same class as lawyers, senior business management, and entrepreneurs. They routinely make similar salaries as us. I would rate wall/ bay street bankers, hedge fund managers, and some elite sports stars above us. While it is good to be thankful and keep things in perspective, I think there's nothing wrong with trying to make a better living for yourself.

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First of all, seeing 50 patients a day does not automatically mean you are providing subpar care. I've seen 50+ in 4-5 hours. Patients RETURN to see me telling me that they appreciate me spending the time with them and also being on time at the same time. I've had many patients thank me relentlessly for helping them get back on their feet because I actually sit and let them speak.

 

Although I spend on average maybe 6 minutes per patient, including charting, that doesn't mean I am spending 6 minutes on every patient. Far from it. Some patients, I sit and chat with for 10, 15 even 20 minutes. Many patients want to just come in and out. How much of my day is spent seeing coughs, colds, random derm stuff, refills, etc that take no more than 1-2 minutes at most. You give the same spiel over and over again and it becomes automatic. I rarely get a question from a patient that I don't know how to answer... Part of it may also be my public health training, in which thinking like an epidemiologist really helps in interpreting tests and answering patient's questions.

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In wrestling they have different weight categories for competitions. Physicians shouldn't be competing or comparing with most other ordinary citizens. In today's capitalist society I would rate physicians as

within the same class as lawyers, senior business management, and entrepreneurs. They routinely make similar salaries as us. I would rate wall/ bay street bankers, hedge fund managers, and some elite sports stars above us. While it is good to be thankful and keep things in perspective, I think there's nothing wrong with trying to make a better living for yourself.

 

touché,

that's exactly what I wanted to say

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Thank you. Agree completely. Money is good, but med students are too fixated on the "average yearly salary" for each individual specialty. I see people struggling on 15 bucks an hour in Vancouver and they work twice as hard as I do. Like I said, my cousin brags to me that he makes just over 100K and he and his wife (who also has a "decent" salary of 80K) just bought a 1.4 million dollar home. Yes, my family is like that (where money is king). I've also had lawyer friends tell me that doctors make not more than 120K a year. I just smile and nod.

 

Just be happy you will all be financially secure. I consider it a good thing that the general public does not know really how much doctors (even GPs) can make (or vastly underestimate). People can get jealous quickly.

 

The average people I've always come across think that most docs are banking 400k with little effort. lol.

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  • 1 month later...

The vast majority of jobs are obtained through word of mouth. A department has a vacancy, and asks around through various channels for someone that is dependable and easy to get along with, or looks to someone that is already known to them.

 

I think a lot of residents have gotten tripped up by this as the job market for many specialties has tightened. There is no set application process like for residency/fellowships, it's much more like a regular job search. Call around to the various departments you are interested in, see if there are nights/weekends/leave/locums that you can cover, and be on your best behaviour with everyone you come in contact with. Most specialties are small close-knit communities in Canada, and you will quickly develop a reputation (good or bad).

 

As for not finding a job in your preferred city, it is very specialty- and city-dependent. For example, Toronto is very tight for almost all surgical specialties, anaesthesia, radiology, GI, cardiology, ICU, med onc, nephro, and is tightening for general IM as well. The specialties finding it easiest right now are those with a primarily outpatient practice that don't need a lot of hospital resources (outpatient IM, family, others). Smaller cities also tend to have more opportunities for new docs.

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Yeah I've always wondered about this. The staff attendings at major teaching hospitals have usually been there for years, and in most major cities, the majority of hospitals are teaching hospitals or affiliated. So where do the new graduates go? It's too bad they don't post where their alumni end up.

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Yeah I've always wondered about this. The staff attendings at major teaching hospitals have usually been there for years, and in most major cities, the majority of hospitals are teaching hospitals or affiliated. So where do the new graduates go? It's too bad they don't post where their alumni end up.

 

Depends on the specialty but the vast majority of grads either end up doing fellowships nowadays or they go into private practice (with or without privileges attached to a hospital). After fellowship(s), they may do community practice or be affiliated with a teaching hospital.

 

Because what you see in med school is all academics, you may think that's the only type of job available and/or the most prestigious. It may be the most prestigious but being in academics will make you relatively poor compared to the same specialist in private practice (note relatively in big bold letters).

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Not sure if this has been posted already, but if you want accurate, Canadian numbers (for Ontario at least) the OMA website has all of the public billings from OHIP for most specialties on 3 separate tables. The first table is for all physicians in that field and the next 2 tables exclude physicians in each field making less than 75K and 100K, respectively (probably to exclude the outliers that are part-time workers).

 

Just go to the OMA website, sign in, click "billing and fee codes" (in the middle-left of the webpage), then click on "physician and health facts" in upper left column, then click on "selected statistics on physician billings and human resources" in the right column under "reports".

 

Keep in mind that things like derm, plastics, and physiatry are grossly underestimated as their private/cosmetic billings are not reflected in this public chart.

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i would say a good rule of thumb median is 250 k for a doctor working full time (doctor hours, which isn't little effort)... moo makes a lot because he works smart, knows billing, and does a lot of private stuff (medico-legal docs, drivers assessments), most docs i came into contact with didn't put a lot of effort into this, they just worked... again, med's like a business, and you have to work smart and hard to make big money. All the docs I knew that made that kind of money were certainly putting in considerably more than a little effort though.

 

The average people I've always come across think that most docs are banking 400k with little effort. lol.
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so true, there was a huge discrepency between what the academic centre salaried psychs made and what the private practice psychiatrists made, but when you throw in workers comp stuff, hiring a psychologist or counsellor you refer too so you can split overhead and take a third of their billings for referal, earning potential increases by quite a bit. my psych doesn't split overhead per se, but three different doctors all split a portion of a house which causes a drastic cut down in overhead, plus you can tailor your practice to particular demographics or throw in cash cow procedures, i spent a day with a guy who did vasectomies all day, once a week (a gp)... that one day a week increased his earnings substantially. get training in some specialized, highly paid procedure, or privately billed thing... or pick up ect in psychiatry (which isn't necessarily performed by the in house psychs believe it or not) for example, and yeah... money

 

lots of people are pretty shameless in talking about the money, my personal fave, thelastpsychiatrist.com has 10 long ass ideas:

 

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2006/09/how_to_get_rich_in_psychiatry_1.html

 

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2006/12/how_to_get_rich_in_psychiatry_2.html

 

he even goes on about giving talks for drug companies, i'm not sure what that's like in canada, but the idea is to be creative

 

 

Depends on the specialty but the vast majority of grads either end up doing fellowships nowadays or they go into private practice (with or without privileges attached to a hospital). After fellowship(s), they may do community practice or be affiliated with a teaching hospital.

 

Because what you see in med school is all academics, you may think that's the only type of job available and/or the most prestigious. It may be the most prestigious but being in academics will make you relatively poor compared to the same specialist in private practice (note relatively in big bold letters).

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i would say a good rule of thumb median is 250 k for a doctor working full time (doctor hours, which isn't little effort)... moo makes a lot because he works smart, knows billing, and does a lot of private stuff (medico-legal docs, drivers assessments), most docs i came into contact with didn't put a lot of effort into this, they just worked... again, med's like a business, and you have to work smart and hard to make big money. All the docs I knew that made that kind of money were certainly putting in considerably more than a little effort though.

 

Add travel medicine to the list. I am starting up a venture with some partners, and we are going to get licensed as a yellow fever vaccine center. All this is private pay too and a lot of patients have to pay for the yellow fever vaccine, otherwise they can't travel (its a requirement to enter some countries) so that means you can bill them quite a bit (usually at least 100 bucks for a consult with group discounts). And usually those who travel to exotic places can afford to pay so there is no shame.

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