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Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019
| Contributor Information
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
More than 3400 young physicians (those under 40 years of age) responded to this year's Medscape compensation survey. Physicians disclosed their salary, hours worked, time spent with patients, debt, net worth, and satisfaction with their career and specialty. (Note: Label values in charts are rounded, but rankings and calculations are based on raw data to avoid rounding errors.)
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Survey respondents were asked to provide their compensation for patient care. For employed physicians, that includes salary, bonus, and profit-sharing contributions. For partners, it includes earnings after taxes and deductible business expenses before income taxes. Only full-time salaries are reported.
Income for physicians of all ages has done quite well since our 2015 report, in which primary care physicians earned an average of $195,000 and specialists earned an average of $284,000. The 2019 figures represent increases of 21.5% and 20%, respectively. The overall average salary for physicians in 2019 was $313,000.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Older primary care physicians and specialists earn considerably more than their younger peers, by about $60,000 annually. In our 2018 Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report, specialists over the age of 40 earned around $72,000 more, and primary care physicians earned $32,000 more in annual salary than younger physicians.
Travis Singleton, executive vice president of Merritt Hawkins, a leading physician search and recruitment firm, says there is a ramp-up period for physicians to hit their "peak earning potential." Although the ramp-up is shorter than in previous years, it's hard to predict when it will occur, owing to such factors as commercial payers versus government payers and starting a practice versus taking over an existing practice, he says.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Among younger physicians, 45% are women, an increase from last year's results. Among older physicians (aged 40-69 years), there is a lower percentage of female physicians.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Medicine is witnessing a greater presence of minority physicians. Whereas a larger percentage of older physicians are Caucasian/white, other racial and ethnic groups are entering the field in larger numbers among younger physicians.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Employment is a far more popular work situation among younger physicians than among older doctors. Similar to last year's data, the majority of physicians younger than 40 years are employed. A smaller percentage of younger doctors are attracted to self-employment: According to the 2019 Medscape Residents Salary & Debt Report, only 22% of residents are considering self-employment for their future.
"Younger physicians are much more likely to be employed than their counterparts 20 years their senior, who are more likely to be practice owners or partners," says Singleton.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
A much higher percentage of younger employed physicians seek a job promotion compared with older physicians. This is not surprising, because this age group is just starting out their career in medicine.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Regardless of age group, male physicians seek promotion in larger percentages than their female counterparts do. Among older physicians, this year's numbers are larger than in last year's report for both men (28%) and women (34%) seeking upward mobility.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Regardless of the practice model, physicians aged 40 years or older earn more than younger physicians—as is the case in virtually all occupations. The largest pay difference between young and older physicians exists in healthcare organizations, followed by hospitals and outpatient clinics. Physicians younger than 40 years are earning the most in office-based single specialty group practices.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
It's no surprise that younger physicians have far more college or medical school loans—for themselves and for their spouse—than do physicians over the age of 40. Likewise, more younger doctors (31%) than older physicians (11%) note childcare as a major expense.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
In this year's report, young plastic surgeons carry the most debt due to school loans, followed by pediatricians, ob/gyns, family medicine physicians, and orthopedists. Rheumatologists under the age of 40 reported the least amount of loan debt for their education. Among physicians of all ages, emergency physicians, physical medicine/rehabilitation physicians, and pediatricians were highest in still paying down school loans.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
These data express the percentage difference of young physicians satisfied with their compensation compared with older physicians. For example, for critical care, 79% of young doctors were satisfied compared with 56% of older physicians, so the difference in percentage satisfied was 23 percentage points. Public health and preventive medicine physicians had the highest rate of dissatisfaction in their annual pay.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Younger and older physicians work equally as hard. About three quarters of both young and older physicians spend 10 or more hours each week on paperwork and administrative duties. This mirrors last year's results and continues to reflect the toll that bureaucratic tasks are taking on physician burnout, as seen in this year's Medscape National Physician Burnout, Depression, and Suicide Report.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Regardless of age, about 90% of physicians say they are either satisfied or very satisfied with their job performance. Despite reports of bullying and burnout in the 2019 Medscape Residents Salary & Debt Report, as well as doubts about practicing that some young physicians expressed, most have made the transition to practicing and feel that they are doing a good job as a physician.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
About 60% of physicians of all ages say they will continue taking new and current Medicare and Medicaid patients. A larger cohort of older physicians than younger physicians still have not decided what to do regarding government payers.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
More than half of young primary care physicians expect to participate in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), as do a large majority of young specialists. More primary care physicians than specialists under the age of 40 anticipate participation in alternative payment models (APM).
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
About 60% of younger and older physicians spend 30-45 hours seeing patients each week. Of those spending 46 hours or more, older physicians (24%) hold a slight edge over their younger counterparts (20%).
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
The majority of doctors—regardless of age—are spending 16 minutes or less with each of their patients. A larger percentage of older physicians (45%) than younger physicians (39%) spend 17 minutes or more with each patient.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
The large majority of both young and older physicians discuss treatment costs with their patients. Only 16% of both age groups say they do not have this conversation in the exam room.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Younger physicians find the most job satisfaction in the gratitude from and relationships with patients, the same as their peers overall. About one quarter said knowing that they are making the world a better place is also rewarding, also similar to physicians overall.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Physicians younger than 40 years find having so many rules and regulations as problematic as dealing with difficult patients, and hence these are their main challenges. Compared with all physicians (15%), younger physicians (10%) see electronic health records (EHRs) as less of a burden, perhaps owing to their comfort level having grown up with technology.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
In general, about 80% of both young and older physicians are happy to be practicing medicine, despite the challenges they face.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Young dermatologists, pulmonologists, and critical care physicians are most likely to choose medicine again if they could redo their career path. On the other end of the spectrum, physical medicine and rehabilitation physicians, rheumatologists, and plastic surgeons said they would be less likely to pursue medicine again.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Whereas more than two thirds of all young physicians would choose their specialty again, gastroenterologists and ophthalmologists reported the highest rate. Nephrologists and rheumatologists were least likely to remain in their current specialty.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
About 80% of both younger and older physicians practicing in the United States, completed their medical training there. Among other countries, the distribution was very similar among age groups.
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Medscape Young Physician Compensation Report 2019
Keith L. Martin | September 4, 2019 | Contributor Information
Medscape's Female Physician Compensation Report explores women's compensation, debts, challenges and rewards of their careers, and more.Medscape Features Slideshows, July 2019
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Comments on Medscape are moderated and should be professional in tone and on topic. You must declare any conflicts of interest related to your comments and responses. Please see our Commenting Guide for further information. We reserve the right to remove posts at our sole discretion.
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Keith L. Martin
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