Good article and the website seems very informative...
(Orthopedics, primary care most requested specialties -- HealthLeadersMedia.com)

The average annual starting compensation for orthopedic surgeons climbed 17.8 percent, settling at $424,385, according to The Delta Companies’ January Physician Recruiting Standard Survey, a recruiter survey reporting quarterly data about physician searches from the previous 12 months.

Mirroring industrywide trends in recent years, physician shortages played a crucial role in compensation and search-request trends in the survey, says Marc Bowles, chief marketing officer for The Delta Companies. For example, orthopedic surgery saw a large compensation jump, in part because more physicians training in orthopedics are opting to specialize in higher-paying subspecialty areas, such as hand or hip and joint surgery, exacerbating the shortage of general orthopedic surgeons, Bowles says.

“There are just fewer general orthopedic candidates out there,” he adds. “More physicians coming out of training want to do either a sports fellowship or foot and ankle and really drill into one type of niche within orthopedics.”

Psychiatry, the only specialty to see a larger increase than orthopedic surgery, is also being influenced by physician supply and demand. Psychiatrists earned an average starting salary of $200,757 in 2006, jumping 24.2 percent from 2005, and a total annual compensation of $224,270, according to the report.

“We’ve seen a large influx of psychiatry searches that are inpatient-only placements,” Bowles says. “There are fewer candidates wanting to practice solely in an inpatient setting, so clients have to offer a little more compensation to attract them.”

Growing demand for hospitalists
Despite its large compensation spike, psychiatry was only the 14th most requested specialty, whereas orthopedic surgery climbed the list of most demanded physician-placement searches in the 2007 survey, beating out internal medicine for the top spot. For the second consecutive year, orthopedic surgery, internal medicine, family practice, and cardiology were the four most requested specialties, according to the survey.

One of the most significant changes to the 2007 survey was the rise of hospitalists on the search-demand list. Hospitalists were the sixth most sought-after specialty in 2006, after not even placing in the 15 most requested searches the previous year. The rise in demand for hospitalists is inextricably linked to the shortage of internists and other primary care physicians, Bowles says. With fewer candidates entering internal-medicine training programs and current internists seeking work-life balance and freedom from excessive call coverage, hospitals and practices are having difficulties attracting these physicians.

However, facilities are discovering that they can hire a hospitalist to handle inpatient care, freeing up practicing internists to focus on less demanding, more productive outpatient care, says Jeff Freeman, president of the permanent placement division at CompHealth, a national physician-recruiting firm based in Utah. “Primary care physicians can be much more productive and efficient by staying in their offices and seeing patients all day, as opposed to taking call and making rounds and admitting patients to the hospital,” he says. “By not taking call and having to go to and from the hospital, primary care doctors have an opportunity to have better work-life balance, which is a request we’re seeing across the board.”

This not only makes an internal-medicine position more appealing to physicians, because they are free from hospital-based responsibilities, but it also provides an attractive alternative for trained internists who find the scheduled shift work of a hospitalist position appealing. Compensation for the two specialties is comparable; internists earned slightly more, bringing in a total annual compensation of $221,076, compared to $213,580 for hospitalists.

A shift to salaries
Growing physician interest in work-life balance also is influencing how facilities pay doctors, as can be seen in the shift from income guarantees to salaried employment arrangements. Today’s physicians prefer to focus on practicing medicine rather than the business aspects of running a practice, and a salary or employment arrangement essentially shifts the business risk from the physician to the hospital, Freeman says.

A standard income guarantee functions much like a loan, with the physician assuming the risk if he or she cannot generate enough revenue to meet the requirements of the guarantee. “Because hospitals are getting better at running the business aspects of practice--more so than they were 10 years ago--they are becoming more willing to assume the risk of a salary in order to attract a physician,” Freeman adds.

Hospital-based physicians were the most likely to receive a salary; 91percent of Delta’s hospital-based placements in 2006 were salaried. Other specialty areas were salaried as follows:

• Medical specialties—83 percent
  
• Surgical specialties—70 percent
  
• Primary care—64 percent

“Primary care is a little behind in the salary area, but I would project it [to increase] over the next year,” Freeman says. “We’re already seeing that a lot of the large health systems are now hiring primary care physicians directly and offering an employment option.”

Bowles predicts current shifts toward salaried work and hiring hospitalists to continue as physician shortages and desires for work-life balance influence compensation and physician supply and demand.

__________________
John Webb, MS, DC, CCEP, DAAIM, FAAPM
SMU
STUDENT
MD 2010
MBA 2009

A bad day at school is still better than a good day at work.

Wow. Thanks for sharing this article. You would think that ortho would get less competitive what with the shortage of general ortho surgeons.

__________________
I used to pray and pray for a bike and never got one. Later I learned that God doesn't work that way... so I went out and stole a bike and asked God for forgiveness.

They are smart from an economic standpoint. Keep numbers low, demand is always there. You are needed, so you can command a high salary....

__________________
AUC Class of '99
Bored certified
I may be a jerk, but I'm a Jedi jerk like my father.

Some say I look like Buzz Lightyear....
(They're right)

DISCLAIMER: I have no financial stake in ValueMD, or any medical school.

A friend of mine just finished his residency in psychiatry, he was offered a job in an Illinois mental health facility for the sum of 89K per year. 220K+? Maybe in private practice. Podiatrists in the boondocks could make 400K+ AFTER COSTS ARE deducted.

Sometimes very underserved areas will subsidize a salary to get someone. I know a guy who was offered a job as an internist for something like $400K per year. He went to visit the area and came back with the opinion there was NO WAY he could live there for the contract period (3 years).

__________________
AUC Class of '99
Bored certified
I may be a jerk, but I'm a Jedi jerk like my father.

Some say I look like Buzz Lightyear....
(They're right)

DISCLAIMER: I have no financial stake in ValueMD, or any medical school.

For 400 thousand big ones I would swim in a pool of dog crap.

That is the thing.. you can make big bucks in the middle of nowhere, they need doctors and you are the only (or few) thing going. In my small Southern town.. the FM people make all the money. Everyone that comes here stops taking new patients after a year.. they are over booked at that point. They have brought in 21 FM, 5 IM and 8 peds in the last 5 years. I hear they are trying to bring in 25 more doctors (all fields), this year alone. THis is ALL ONE group. However.. this group is owned by the same company that owns the hosipital here too. They almost have a monopoly on healthcare in our town. They charge everything upfront and if you owe.. you dont see the doctor. They start out their FM docs at a salary of $175G's a year for two years, then it is a $100G base with bonuses and productivity.

I know a IMG (SGU) that is here in town. They gave him $150G's his first year in town..and he doesn't even work for them. He opened his own office (his dad used to practice in our town), but they gave him $$ so he would send all his labs, MRIs, admits,..etc.. to their hospital and not the bigger one in the next town. Think of this.. when an MRI bills out at 1200-2500 each.. he doesn't have to refer a lot of pts there for tests before they got their money back.

__________________
John Webb, MS, DC, CCEP, DAAIM, FAAPM
SMU
STUDENT
MD 2010
MBA 2009

A bad day at school is still better than a good day at work.

Does anyone know how competitive the orthopedics residencies are?

It's pretty competitive. From what I have heard/read, some programs have Step 1 score filters (e.g., 230+ gets an interview), others even have research filters, etc. For more, go here:
ortho chances - Student Doctor Network Forums

__________________
I used to pray and pray for a bike and never got one. Later I learned that God doesn't work that way... so I went out and stole a bike and asked God for forgiveness.

I may be wrong... but I think it is the HARDEST residency to obtain as an IMG. Look at the AMA site, only like 2% of then are IMGs. More (higher percentage) IMGs get derm and radiology than ortho.

My best bud is an anesthesiologist... he says there is no reason every ortho shouldn't make at least 600K a year. The ones he works with make over a million a year. However.. saying that.. one he is really good friends with "only" made 420K last year. He ONLY does carpal tunnel related surgery. He also owns a private MRI center and made $480K from it last year.

Like posted above..they take care of themselves... keep the numbers low, so they are in demand.

I tell you what field I think will be making some money in the next 10 years...UROLOGY... I read that 68% of practicing urologist in the US were over 60 years old. The lowered the urology residency programs years ago and never really raised the levels back up. Hence, in the next 10 years, they will be losing almost a third of their doctors. With the baby boomers out there... there will be a HUGE demand for urologist. By this time all radiology and pathology will be outsourced to India.

Just my two cents..no.. sorry...
that was Canadian penny and a ball of lent...

__________________
John Webb, MS, DC, CCEP, DAAIM, FAAPM
SMU
STUDENT
MD 2010
MBA 2009

A bad day at school is still better than a good day at work.