Several reports have come out in recent months highlighting physician compensation trends. While data periods, criteria and samples differed over such reports, some trends emerged that showed consistent data, including a strong correlation between compensation increases in certain specialties.
Compiled below are some headline categories from three reports: The "2023 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives" from AMN Healthcare, the Medscape "Physician Compensation Report 2023" and Sullivan Cotter's "2022-2023 Physician Compensation and Productivity Report."
Highest- and lowest-paid specialties
$619,000: Plastic surgery (Medscape)
$249,000: Public health and preventive medicine
*$677,691: Cardiology (Sullivan Cotter)
*$270,666: Pediatrics
*of specialties showing highest increases
$633,000: Orthopedics (AMN)
$233,000: Pediatrics
Specialties with consistently high pay raises across reports
Anesthesiology: Compensation increases were between 10 percent and 12.5 percent, with median salaries ranging from $448,000 to $472,727.
Oncology: Compensation increases were between 9 percent and 13 percent, with median salaries ranging from $406,258 to $463,000.
Psychiatry: Compensation increases were between 8 percent and 19 percent, with median salaries ranging from $281,262 (child/adolescent only) and $355,000.
Highest and lowest pay raises
Psychiatry had a 19 percent increase to a median of $355,000, according to AMN. The largest decrease was a 10 percent decline in noninvasive cardiology to a median of $433,000.
Oncology was up 13 percent to a median of $463,000, while ophthalmology was down 7 percent to $388,000, according to Medscape.
Hospitalist-internal medicine salaries rose 14 percent to $326,417, Sullivan Cotter said.
Incentive payments
The average signing bonus for physicians increased 21 percent from 2022 to $37,473 this year, according to AMN. The average signing bonus for nurse practitioners and physician assistants is $8,355, down 7 percent from $9,000 last year.
Gender and minority pay differences
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, Medscape said. Male specialists earned 27 percent more than female specialists compared with a 31 percent gap in the 2022 report.
White physicians ($358,000) and Asian Americans ($351,000) earn more than their Black ($311,000) and Latino ($338,000) counterparts, the 2023 report said.