<p>I have been hearing that going into the medical field for the money is ridiculous because of HMOs and medicare and malpractice and whatnot. But then it seems that all doctors are making 6 figures which seems like a great amount of money. So my questions are, do doctors still make 6figs after HMO and all that affects it? If so, is the argument that 6figs is not worth it because med school and residency is a long and rough road to take if you are only in it for the money compared to other lucrative fields, fields that usually result in substantially larger amounts of money with less schooling?</p>
<p>You should probably glance through the thread above about whether a career in medicine is worth it.....it might help....</p>
<p>Calculating hourly reimbursement is revealing. </p>
<p>At first glance, $100K seems like $50/Hr given a 40 Hr week, 50 weeks per year working. However, full time physicians, in general work more than 40 hours a week.</p>
<p>Consider the doc who takes 24 hour call twice a week plus his normal 40 hour clinic duty. By standard reckoning, each call day adds 4 hours of overtime at time and a half (to make 12 hours that day) plus 12 hours of double time to complete the night.</p>
<p>40 hours base
8 x 1.5 = 12 (overtime)
24 x 2 = 48 (double time for night)
totals to 100 hours/week
50 weeks per year = 5000 hours per year
for an hourly rate of $20</p>
<p>This of course is net income after office overhead. Remember also that many doctors pay their own health insurance, retirement, disability insurance, liability insurance, cme and licensure fees.</p>
<p>Not considered here are the costs of educational debt and opportunity cost of medical training or the intangible costs of shortened life expectancy and increased divorce rate among physicians. </p>
<p>For a comment on what a doctor makes compared to the UPS guy's salary see <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=1052112&highlight=ups#post1052112%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=1052112&highlight=ups#post1052112</a></p>
<p>is it bad to say that I won't mind the idea of working 80+hours/week for the benefit of mankind as long as I have a comfortable couch and a nice flatscreen tv to come home to veg out in front of? that's not too selfish, right?</p>
<p>hah no not at all......</p>
<p>or you could be a psychiatrist in private practice, charging your patients $200/hr (about the going rate in the CT/NYC/Boston corridor), and make between 300- 400 per year while sitting on the couch all day long.</p>
<p>That's so not true. Many psychiatrists make less than 100K a year simply because of the demand in areas or because they just aren't that good.</p>
<p>sorry aspen d, but in my professional and academic experiences as a psychologist, that has been true.</p>
<p>One of my doctor friends/mentors is one. She makes quite a bit and sees patients when she wants and for how long she wants. She makes about that much per hour and is always booked and no actually having to be "on call" persay. She does have an answering service and she deals with issues on the weekends and nights, but its over the phone and when she wants to. And this is in CT.</p>
<p>just out of curiosity, what is the route exactly for becoming a psychiatrist? What is needed in undergrad, and what type of grad program would you go through?</p>
<p>gotta go thru med school, just like any other medical doctor.</p>
<p>This site has pretty good information, but i was wondering if these are accurate?</p>
<p>yeah i have the same question.....ive seen that site b/f myself....plus, wat exactly does ORS stand for ?</p>
<p>Doctors for the most part will still be able to feed their families, take vacations and live a fairly comfortable life. </p>
<p>Whether the amount of compensation and satisfaction is worth it is an individual choice.</p>
<p>I think ive always had a pretty reasonable look at the lifestyle a career as an cardiothoracic surgeon provides. A nice large home, obviously not a multi-million dollar home...a nice bmw, lexus, something along that line...an overall very comfortable life. But what i think a lot of people on here are saying is that when you compare how much you make to how much you will be working it seems as though your underpaid.</p>
<p>That and there are way more trained CT surgeons then positions opened for them. Many interventional cardiologists do the same procedures are Ct surgs. and they take a lot of their patients. The truth is today doctors are paid quite nicely. But for most people on this website, you won't be practicing medicine for another 10-11 or even more years, and look how much medicine changed in the 90's. Compensation for docs will certainly go down in this time with less people having insurance, but just as many sick people.</p>
<p>See the discussion of the Medicare sustainable growth rate at the Texas medical association site: <a href="http://www.texmed.org/Template.aspx?id=3728%5B/url%5D">http://www.texmed.org/Template.aspx?id=3728</a></p>
<p>
[quote]
Federal law requires Medicare payments to physicians to be modified annually using a formula known as the sustainable growth rate (SGR). Because of flaws in its methodology, the formula has mandated physician fee cuts in recent years; only short-term congressional fixes have averted these cuts. Absent additional, long-term congressional action, the SGR will continue to mandate physician fee cuts for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Medicare payment increases for hospitals have closely paralleled the Medicare Economic Index (MEI), which is Medicares measure of the increasing costs of providing medical services. Physician fees, however, have fallen well behind the MEI and will lag further still in future years.</p>
<p>Medicare payments to physicians cover only about 65 percent of the actual cost of providing patient services. The SGR links physician payment updates to the gross domestic product (GDP). Fluctuations in general economic conditions as measured by GDP, however, have very little relationship to the cost of providing patient services.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Medicare rates are relevant to global reimbursement because seniors will make up a larger fraction of insured patients as the baby boomers turn 65 and because many private insurers currently base their payment schedules on the medicare fee schedule (as a multiplier, typically 0.8 to 1.2, times the medicare rate).</p>
<p>Bigndude's observation that practice economics will be different in 10 or more years is the most important point in this thread.</p>
<p>Becoming a doctor isn't about having a high salary(or it shouldn't be), it's about wanting to help and make a difference. If your contemplating not becoming a doctor just because of how much a physician will make in the future, then I'm sorry, I don't believe that being a doctor will be the right occupation for you. I can't wait to see a patient post opp and see what difference I made in their lives. Money can't amount to anything like seeing a patient walk out of a hospital just because YOU helped. I know that I haven't gone though 12 or so years of college yet, but I know that my compassion for helping patients will keep me going so that one day, I will be wearing that white jacket with "Dr. Wallace" on the front. But until then all I can do is hope, pray and work hard so that "hopefully", one day, I will be one of the best doctors that has ever walked in and out of a hospital.</p>
<p>And I wanted to wish everyone who is striving to make a difference the best of luck in the future!!! And hopefully someday, I'll be seeing your name on that white doctors jacket, and we'll be making a difference together.</p>
<p>the fact is...people need to know that they can make a comfortable life for their family, no matter how much compassion they have for the job.</p>
<p>When was the last time you saw a poor doctor? Pay may go down for doctors, but never will you see a doctor who can't afford to put food on the table for his family.</p>