Physician Compensation Report Out
The Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2012 is out. And, we here at MyMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.com love data –that is why we have tracked med mal premiums across major specialties, states and medical malpractice insurance providers over the last 10 years.
Let’s look at some of the Physician Compensation results for this year and see if it has anything to say about med mal premiums. Over 24,000 US physicians from 25 specialty areas responded to the online survey. Overall, physician income went down. The top five earners were: radiologists and orthopedic surgeons tied at $315,000, then cardiologists at $314,000, and anesthesiologists and urologists at $309,000. As one would expect, the lowest earning specialties were: pediatrics, family medicine, and internal medicine. And, unfortunately, the income gap between male and female physicians continues with male physicians earning about 40% more than female physicians.
Interestingly, the Physician Compensation report goes on to say that physicians in the North Central area of the country tend to earn the most. For Physician Compensation Report purposes, this area is comprised of Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota. These physicians most likely earn more because they are working in rural areas and small towns often have to pay physicians more to attract them.
The Physician Compensation Report clearly found a growing dissatisfaction among physicians. Interestingly, for both male and female physicians, only 51% feel that they are fairly compensated. And, this year, only 54% said that they would choose a medical career again. This number is dramatically lower compared to last year, which had 69% of physicians saying that they would choose medicine again. Regarding overall satisfaction, Dermatology scored the highest, with only 64% of dermatologists saying that they were satisfied –and this was dramatically down from 80% for last year.
If you would like to review more data, like med mal premiums, take a minute to review our state medical malpractice insurance pages. Each state page lists med mal premiums for the past 10 years across several major specialties and carriers.
