While overall physician salaries rose about 4 percent, earnings disparities remain wide between genders and between races even as some gaps are narrowing, the 2023 Medscape "Physician Compensation" report showed.
Overall physician salaries rose to an average of $352,000, up about 4 percent on the previous year, with specialty incomes rising to an average of $382,000 compared with $368,000 in 2022. Primary care providers saw their incomes rise to an average of $265,000 compared with $260,000 in 2022.
Some specialties decreased on average to last year's figures, however.
"We expect physician income to continue increasing, as everyone talks about a physician shortage, which the pandemic has exacerbated," Mike Belkin, divisional vice president at physician recruitment company Merritt Hawkins, said in the report. "We see more physicians burned out, retiring, reducing their hours, or looking for shift work or virtual care, which further reduces the physician workforce."
Male primary care physicians earned 19 percent more than their female counterparts, a "significant disparity" but lower than recent years, when it averaged around 25 percent. Male specialists earned 27 percent more than female specialists compared with a 31 percent gap in the 2022 report.
Caucasian/white physicians ($358,000) and Asian Americans ($351,000) earn more than their African American counterparts ($311,000), the 2023 report said.
For its latest report, Medscape collected responses from more than 10,000 physicians across 29 specialties, with data collected between Oct. 7, 2022, and Jan. 14, 2023.
This report reflects salary, bonus and profit-sharing contributions for employed physicians, and earnings after taxes and pre-income tax deductible business expenses for self-employed physicians. Only full-time salaries are used in calculations. Note: Percentages are rounded.
- Plastic surgery: $619,000 (7 percent increase)
- Orthopedics: $573,000 (3 percent increase)
- Cardiology: $507,000 (3 percent increase)
- Urology: $506,000 (10 percent increase)
- Gastroenterology: $501,000 (11 percent increase)
- Otolaryngology: 485,000 (3 percent increase)
- Radiology: $483,000 (11 percent increase)
- Oncology: $463,000 (13 percent increase)
- Anesthesiology: $448,000 (11 percent increase)
- Dermatology: $443,000 (1 percent increase)
- Surgery, General: $412,000 (2 percent increase)
- Critical Care: $406,000 (10 percent increase)
- Ophthalmology: $388,000 (7 percent decrease)
- Pulmonary medicine: $378,000 (7 percent increase)
- Emergency medicine: $352,000 (6 percent decrease)
- Pathology: $339,000 (1 percent increase)
- OB-GYN: $337,000 (0.3 percent increase)
- Neurology: $313,000 (4 percent increase)
- Nephrology: $312,000 (5 percent decrease)
- Psychiatry: $309,000 (8 percent increase)
- Physical medicine and rehabilitation: $306,000 (5 percent decrease)
- Allergy and immunology: $282,000 (5 percent decrease)
- Rheumatology: $281,000 (3 percent decrease)
- Internal medicine: $273,000 (3 percent increase)
- Diabetes and endocrinology: $267,000 (4 percent increase)
- Infectious diseases: $262,000 (1 percent increase)
- Family medicine: $255,000 (Same)
- Pediatrics: $251,000 (3 percent increase)
- Public health and preventive medicine: $249,000 (2 percent increase)