Jump to content
Premed 101 Forums

Ophthalmology LASIK Salary


Recommended Posts

I now I will be attacked for even asking, but I was wondering whether someone could tell me how much Ophthalmologists doing LASIK make.

I took a look at the billings from the MSP Blue Book and Alberta health(these do not include LASIK but instead publicly-funded surgeries cataracts and the like). The top billing surgeon was making 2.5 million dollars.

 

I'm wondering whether anyone knows and cares to share whether a pure LASIK surgeon makes. Is it above $ 2.5 million dollars or less? I've done some research and billings appear higher than that , but overhead seems steep, so I can't fully acertain this. Plus you have to pay a commission to Lasikmd.

 

I am in first-year med student and am decideing my future career, so I would appreciate honest feedback from senior year students interested in ophtho. If you want to moralize go to another thread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

He was a radiologist with 2.5 m in BC. I'm doing an elective with an ophtho retina surgen Who makes 1.5 m /yr but overhead is killing him..

 

radiology has high overhead too. seems like it (overhead) kills everyone!

 

i'm surprised about any ophtho getting 'killed' though. i thought it was absolutely balla.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

when i got lasik, the dr, who i would have mistaken for a movie star, had he not had scrubs on, told me i made a great choice to do medicine... "you'll make "****loadsacash"". He was an employee who worked 4 days a week and who was payed to fly in to the city every week, he told he made over a mil a year, as after the '****loadsacash" comment i got the impression he didn't mind me asking... no hiding his intentions i guess, LOL

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hmm, as if even 80 percent overhead of 1.5 million is getting killed, LOL...

 

radiology has high overhead too. seems like it (overhead) kills everyone!

 

i'm surprised about any ophtho getting 'killed' though. i thought it was absolutely balla.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You mean 6-8 years of post grad education (like PhD's, dentists, lawyers, MBA's, masters grads etc., who don't make nearly what optho's make, nor are able to work wherever they want, and have very good job autonomy), with a PAID (on average 60 k when you average out the 5 years) 5 year residency. Don't even pull that BS with me, lasik surgery is a cop out to medicine IMO, having actually had the procedure they essentially do nothing, besides have a license to do the surgery, that requires a 1-2 million dollar salary. The technicians and the computer do all the work. In all honesty family docs could be trained to do the surgery, with opthamologists on staff to handle complications.

 

Personally, I think the internal and surgical guys should get the big bucks, rads, optho, and derm need a huge roll back, and with some public health guys I've been talking to, they will be, at least in my province.

 

I don't know if you've ever been poor in your life, but I feel that 150-200 k is an amazing amount of money, even with my 6-8 years of post grad education

 

people live on far less than 14 years of post-grad education too
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You mean 6-8 years of post grad education (like PhD's, dentists, lawyers, MBA's, masters grads etc., who don't make nearly what optho's make, nor are able to work wherever they want, and have very good job autonomy), with a PAID (on average 60 k when you average out the 5 years) 5 year residency. Don't even pull that BS with me, lasik surgery is a cop out to medicine IMO, having actually had the procedure they essentially do nothing, besides have a license to do the surgery, that requires a 1-2 million dollar salary. The technicians and the computer do all the work. In all honesty family docs could be trained to do the surgery, with opthamologists on staff to handle complications.

 

Personally, I think the internal and surgical guys should get the big bucks, rads, optho, and derm need a huge roll back, and with some public health guys I've been talking to, they will be, at least in my province.

 

I don't know if you've ever been poor in your life, but I feel that 150-200 k is an amazing amount of money, even with my 6-8 years of post grad education

 

Said it all for me ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I now I will be attacked for even asking, but I was wondering whether someone could tell me how much Ophthalmologists doing LASIK make.

I took a look at the billings from the MSP Blue Book and Alberta health(these do not include LASIK but instead publicly-funded surgeries cataracts and the like). The top billing surgeon was making 2.5 million dollars.

 

I'm wondering whether anyone knows and cares to share whether a pure LASIK surgeon makes. Is it above $ 2.5 million dollars or less? I've done some research and billings appear higher than that , but overhead seems steep, so I can't fully acertain this. Plus you have to pay a commission to Lasikmd.

 

I am in first-year med student and am decideing my future career, so I would appreciate honest feedback from senior year students interested in ophtho. If you want to moralize go to another thread.

 

 

so what if they make less than 2.5mil you're not interested?? haha

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You mean 6-8 years of post grad education (like PhD's, dentists, lawyers, MBA's, masters grads etc., who don't make nearly what optho's make, nor are able to work wherever they want, and have very good job autonomy), with a PAID (on average 60 k when you average out the 5 years) 5 year residency. Don't even pull that BS with me, lasik surgery is a cop out to medicine IMO, having actually had the procedure they essentially do nothing, besides have a license to do the surgery, that requires a 1-2 million dollar salary. The technicians and the computer do all the work. In all honesty family docs could be trained to do the surgery, with opthamologists on staff to handle complications.

 

Personally, I think the internal and surgical guys should get the big bucks, rads, optho, and derm need a huge roll back, and with some public health guys I've been talking to, they will be, at least in my province.

 

I don't know if you've ever been poor in your life, but I feel that 150-200 k is an amazing amount of money, even with my 6-8 years of post grad education

 

who are these public health guys you spoke with? did they get their information from some other guys who spoke with their guys?

 

'guys' have been talking about reducing high-paying salaries for 10+ years, but it never seems to happen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

who are these public health guys you spoke with? did they get their information from some other guys who spoke with their guys?

 

'guys' have been talking about reducing high-paying salaries for 10+ years, but it never seems to happen.

 

I don't understand why it would be so hard to roll back ophtho salaries (representing like 1% of physicians) and give more to the real gruelling surgical and internal specialties (representing a larger majority of physicians). I'd imagine there would be minimal backlash from the medical community.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You mean 6-8 years of post grad education (like PhD's, dentists, lawyers, MBA's, masters grads etc., who don't make nearly what optho's make, nor are able to work wherever they want, and have very good job autonomy), with a PAID (on average 60 k when you average out the 5 years) 5 year residency.

 

Considering you can do masters/MBA in as little as a year or two (and a lot of people doing MBAs have it paid for by their company), dentistry is 4 years, law is 3...I don't know how you can really compare those to medicine (for those who go on to do fellowships etc., you're looking at >11 yrs of post-grad education in some cases. Not to mention most Master's/PhD students are getting school paid for + stipends in grad school, whereas med students are paying it out of their own pocket...So to make the comparison between salaries in medicine with other fields is pretty useless, because none have the training time or costs associated with becoming a doctor.

 

I should also throw it that an opthalmologist certainly does not have the ability to work "wherever they want", they would need a certain population base to justify the costs of setting up in an area, and a lot of rural hospitals certainly don't have the budget/equipment to allow for opthalmology, so they are definitely limited in terms of where they can practice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't clinics like LASIK MD etc. providing procedures not covered by MCP? Patients are paying out of their pockets for a private service. So even if govt. reduces billing for optho, they would still get just as much as they did before.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't understand why it would be so hard to roll back ophtho salaries (representing like 1% of physicians) and give more to the real gruelling surgical and internal specialties (representing a larger majority of physicians). I'd imagine there would be minimal backlash from the medical community.

 

you wouldn't be fighting against the medical community. you'll be fighting against the entire ophtho community, from which you will receive 100% backlash.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

you're mistaking education with a paid internship, a fellow is paid 80 g, this is hardly chump change, many fellows can moonlight and make huge salaries as residents.

 

dentistry cost about twice as much as med w/ materials and most dentists dont make as much as specialists, opthamologists in particular.

 

masters and phd students may or may not have school paid for, they take 1-4years for masters, 4-8 for phd, and have a ****ty payoff in terms of job security and financial reward.

 

law cost as much as med, with 1 year articling at a **** salary, and very few lawyers make 200-250 g nor are guaranteed jobs.

 

your also a little misleading by framing the first paragraph of your response in terms of medicine in general and going to the second paragraph to specify ophthamologists to refute one of my claims, my claim was about opthamology in general, and you only seem to address it in the second paragraph, where the bulk of your argument doesn't happen to be.

 

I never said doctors don't deserve to make more than these other professions, I just said ROAD specialties, minus the A, are more than a tad bit over paid.

 

Considering you can do masters/MBA in as little as a year or two (and a lot of people doing MBAs have it paid for by their company), dentistry is 4 years, law is 3...I don't know how you can really compare those to medicine (for those who go on to do fellowships etc., you're looking at >11 yrs of post-grad education in some cases. Not to mention most Master's/PhD students are getting school paid for + stipends in grad school, whereas med students are paying it out of their own pocket...So to make the comparison between salaries in medicine with other fields is pretty useless, because none have the training time or costs associated with becoming a doctor.

 

I should also throw it that an opthalmologist certainly does not have the ability to work "wherever they want", they would need a certain population base to justify the costs of setting up in an area, and a lot of rural hospitals certainly don't have the budget/equipment to allow for opthalmology, so they are definitely limited in terms of where they can practice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

yup, exactly

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't clinics like LASIK MD etc. providing procedures not covered by MCP? Patients are paying out of their pockets for a private service. So even if govt. reduces billing for optho, they would still get just as much as they did before.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yea if it's private, i.e. body waxing, breast enhancement, Lasik, cosmetics, then I don't care if they make so much money, that's their business. That's just like telling the owner of a salon that he gets too much money for the amount of work he puts in. As long as there's people willing to pay for their services, it's a business and you can't do anything about it.

 

But if the government is using everyone's taxes to reimburse them unfairly for the amount of work they're doing, then that should be changed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

See article below regarding fee allocations and Ontario Medical Association attempts to even things up a bit. Really good read!

 

MA looking to new panel to produce fee relativity

WRITTEN BY MATT BORSELLINO ON MAY 4, 2010 FOR THE MEDICAL POST

 

Dr. Mark MacLeod

 

LONDON, Ont. – The Ontario Medical Association has a new panel to “oversee” the contentious issue of fee relativity.

 

The CANDI relativity implementation committee, CRIC, met for the first time April 23, according to reports distributed to delegates attending this year’s OMA annual meeting here.

 

During that session, it discussed a work strategy, including timelines and a proposal for consultation with various clinical sections. Its mandate is to implement recommendations of a report delivered by a relative value implementation committee (RVIC) working group to OMA council’s last meeting in November.

 

“CRIC’s job is to oversee implementation of the CANDI methodology,” noted incoming OMA president Dr. Mark MacLeod during an interview the day after the meeting. “It’s a very operations-oriented group charged with performing the studies and doing the data analysis when that’s done.

 

“The sections here have a much better understanding of each other’s perspectives,” he added. “We’ve had a pretty good dialogue, people have had good opportunities to voice their opinions, and we’ve had a pretty broad and wide-ranging process to do this.

 

“People now understand their profession has some big tasks ahead of it. Getting a solution to the relativity problem, which has been a longstanding problem for this association, is an important step for us in being able to move forward.”

 

The recently-developed CANDI method—comparison of average net daily income—was approved by council at that meeting, after vocal opposition by members of a handful of clinical sections, as the mechanism to allocate half the fee increases available during the last two years of the OMA’s current medical services contract with the province.

 

“The main recommendations to be implemented relate to the initiation and oversight of research studies on income, overhead and hours of work,” states the board of directors report to council by chairman Dr. Stewart Kennedy, the Thunder Bay-based GP confirmed as the OMA’s president-elect during the meeting.

 

“Those three pieces need to be completed before we can move the process along,” Dr. MacLeod noted. “A lot of work is now in the process of being done, so, in a sense, we’re at a weigh-point. We have to have all of the data come back before the process can move any further and (CRIC) is doing that work now. It’s a pretty big job.”

 

The new committee’s terms of reference were approved at the OMA’s February board meeting, while Dr. Gail Beck, an Ottawa psychiatrist, was named its chairwoman at the March meeting.

 

As an indication of its relevance and scope, panel members are the five board members elected by council from the OMA’s general and family practice (Drs. Alicia Donohue and Scott Wooder), diagnostic imaging (Dr. Virginia Walley), medical (Dr. Doug Weir) and surgical (Dr. Wayne Tanner) assemblies and council chairman Dr. Alan Hudak.

 

On Oct. 1, there will be a 3% general professional fee increase that, according to the OMA’s agreement will be split in half. One half will be allocated to all recognized clinical sections evenly on an across-the-board basis.

 

The other will be allocated according to the CANDI model, a complex determination of the relative worth of a section’s fees and how much time goes into delivering those services.

 

“At this time, we are not able to provide specialty-specific allocation figures as the relativity amounts have not been agreed to by the ministry,” Dr. Kennedy wrote.

 

The specialty allocation process allows OMA clinical sections—more than 30 of them—to be directly involved in how funds are assigned to specific fees and other items. Sections have already submitted fee proposals to the medical services payment committee to discuss possible Oct. 1 fee adjustments.

 

Fee relativity has dogged OMA policymakers for more than two decades. Last November, a hornet’s nest of controversy was somewhat calmed when council chose to use the CANDI method for the next two years before proposals of a future review would be put in place.

Half the increases of 3% this year and 4.25% next year—reached as part of the OMA deal and estimated to be worth more than $400 million—is to be distributed by the CANDI method.

 

A mechanism put forward by the RVIC group had earlier been used to help allocate last year’s fee increase with 47% going to GPs and 53% to specialists.

 

A preliminary CANDI proposal would have resulted in 67% to 33% split respectively. However, after howls of concern by a number of specialties, particularly relatively small sections that would have suffered large losses but don’t have the political clout of larger ones, a “skills acquisition modifier” (SAM) was added to the CANDI formula that closed the gap to 60% to 40%.

 

“Those numbers are purely estimations based on known data at this point in time, so data coming from studies yet to be done will replace the estimated data in what was presented to council,” said Dr. MacLeod.

 

Dr. Hirotaka Yamashiro, chairman of the section on pediatrics, one of the most boisterous of those small groups, agreed to use CANDI to allocate the next two annual fee increases, believing his point had been made at the November meeting.

 

“We now believe the board is concerned about our concerns,” he told the Medical Post at the time. “Now, we just have to wait and see if anything is done about them.”

 

His focus will now undoubtedly be CRIC.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Yea if it's private, i.e. body waxing, breast enhancement, Lasik, cosmetics, then I don't care if they make so much money, that's their business. That's just like telling the owner of a salon that he gets too much money for the amount of work he puts in. As long as there's people willing to pay for their services, it's a business and you can't do anything about it.

 

But if the government is using everyone's taxes to reimburse them unfairly for the amount of work they're doing, then that should be changed.

 

On one hand I see your point, but on the other, I kind of disagree. For example, look at cataracts. An opthalmologist is now serving many more people than they used to, and while they are not putting in more time per se to do so, they are also giving a lot more people their vision back then they used to previously, and this benefits society/economy tremendously. Sure they can do the procedure much quicker than they used to, but given that most specialists are fee-for-service, should the opthalmologists be rolled back even though they are providing more service? I think when you start to do this you open a whole can of worms that can seriously reduce innovation, as you decrease a lot of the incentive to come up with time-saving methods of treatment (since it is simply the time spent working, and not number of procedures that would matter). While I do agree that some specialties do make disproportionately high amounts of money compared to their colleagues, i'm not sure that rolling back payments is the way to do it, although i don't really have any better ideas!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

you're mistaking education with a paid internship, a fellow is paid 80 g, this is hardly chump change, many fellows can moonlight and make huge salaries as residents.

 

dentistry cost about twice as much as med w/ materials and most dentists dont make as much as specialists, opthamologists in particular.

 

masters and phd students may or may not have school paid for, they take 1-4years for masters, 4-8 for phd, and have a ****ty payoff in terms of job security and financial reward.

 

law cost as much as med, with 1 year articling at a **** salary, and very few lawyers make 200-250 g nor are guaranteed jobs.

 

your also a little misleading by framing the first paragraph of your response in terms of medicine in general and going to the second paragraph to specify ophthamologists to refute one of my claims, my claim was about opthamology in general, and you only seem to address it in the second paragraph, where the bulk of your argument doesn't happen to be.

 

I never said doctors don't deserve to make more than these other professions, I just said ROAD specialties, minus the A, are more than a tad bit over paid.

 

All I was saying is that you can't compare other "highly-educated" fields to medicine. While Dentistry costs more, they also are making a lot more than a resident for the 5 years after they graduate. I would also argue that the students who get into medicine would be the ones near the top of law/MBA program, which would get them jobs that pay just as well as most doctors would make I would imagine (remember, Canada is graduating <30 optho's a year, and how many of those will go on to bill >$1 000 000...I bet there are a lot more I-bankers/lawyers making that kind of money than optho's). And I don't think you can compare master's or PhD students to medicine, because any student who gets into medicine could definitely get full funding for grad school...so instead of graduating with an average of $150 000 of debt, you are covered during your master's time + potential work income afterwards.

So I agree, doctor's in my mind anyways, do deserve to make more on average than those other professions (which I think they do...)

Not going to fight you on the fact that there definitely exists a rather unfortunate pay gradient for optho's (unless you are/aspire to be one, haha), but see my previous post for the dilemma I see...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest WarrenAch
All I was saying is that you can't compare other "highly-educated" fields to medicine. While Dentistry costs more, they also are making a lot more than a resident for the 5 years after they graduate. I would also argue that the students who get into medicine would be the ones near the top of law/MBA program, which would get them jobs that pay just as well as most doctors would make I would imagine (remember, Canada is graduating <30 optho's a year, and how many of those will go on to bill >$1 000 000...I bet there are a lot more I-bankers/lawyers making that kind of money than optho's). And I don't think you can compare master's or PhD students to medicine, because any student who gets into medicine could definitely get full funding for grad school...so instead of graduating with an average of $150 000 of debt, you are covered during your master's time + potential work income afterwards.

So I agree, doctor's in my mind anyways, do deserve to make more on average than those other professions (which I think they do...)

Not going to fight you on the fact that there definitely exists a rather unfortunate pay gradient for optho's (unless you are/aspire to be one, haha), but see my previous post for the dilemma I see...

 

Agreed,i guess no matter what you do,to get a lot of money,you have to work hard,Law/Banking is no where easier than Med,both need you to focus full time to get the large salary charts.

But i guess Med has a better working comditions,you can find a job more easily than a guy fresh out B-School(unless that guy was on the top 10%)...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On one hand I see your point, but on the other, I kind of disagree. For example, look at cataracts. An opthalmologist is now serving many more people than they used to, and while they are not putting in more time per se to do so, they are also giving a lot more people their vision back then they used to previously, and this benefits society/economy tremendously. Sure they can do the procedure much quicker than they used to, but given that most specialists are fee-for-service, should the opthalmologists be rolled back even though they are providing more service? I think when you start to do this you open a whole can of worms that can seriously reduce innovation, as you decrease a lot of the incentive to come up with time-saving methods of treatment (since it is simply the time spent working, and not number of procedures that would matter). While I do agree that some specialties do make disproportionately high amounts of money compared to their colleagues, i'm not sure that rolling back payments is the way to do it, although i don't really have any better ideas!

 

If it takes 1 hour to do cataracts now lets say and before it took 2 hours but you make the same amount of money per procedure why shouldn't you be paid about half as much per procedure. The time to perform a produre should not be the only factor that decides the price but it should be a pretty good factor. They will work the same amount of time and at the end of the year get paid the same.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...