Current Salary ?

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I had a classmate or two that moonlighted and we looked into it while I was a resident. The biggest issue for us was malpractice insurance since ours wouldn't cover us for moonlighting. The licensing was also an issue since we didn't all have full licenses, some just educational-limited licenses. Another issue was about billing. The way we had envisioned it was that we would take turns on a weekend going to some nursing homes and trimming nails with an attending. In order to bill under the attendings name, the attending needs to be there as well, and there weren't any attendings interested in giving up more than 1 Saturday a month. That boils down to just a few Saturdays per year per resident, which didn't even cover the cost of malpractice or getting a full license. Some of the residents I have heard of moonlighting did so by billing under the attendings name while the attending wasn't there, which we weren't going to do.

As has been mentioned, there are other specialties that are much more friendly towards moonlighting. The EM residents at my hospital could make more than their resident salary in moonlighting towards the end of their residency if they really wanted to. Their schedule (working ~15-18 shifts a month) makes moonlighting easier to happen. There were also opportunities for the IM/FM residents to cover shifts in the ICU and occasionally for surgical subspecialties to cover the trauma call if all the GS residents were at a conference. We couldn't cover trauma because we didn't have ATLS and couldn't cover ICU because we didn't do an ICU rotation. We basically were the poorest residents at my hospital. :)

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Could you fill in / moonlight as a surgical tech / scrub?
 
Could you fill in / moonlight as a surgical tech / scrub?
I was a scrub tech as a pre pod, doing it as a resident seems feasible IF you can get someone to hire you. When I did it we didn't get any formal training, a local women's surgery center hired pre meds and paid just over what the local burger King paid, but we did it for the experience. As a resident the only scenario I can imagine is to work nights and weekends when you aren't on call, so you likely would be on call as a scrub tech. But you would need to know the identity of instruments used in other specialties, and it may be difficult to get a hospital to hire you I suppose, but you never know until you try.
 
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I assure you your time will best be spent by reading. Any side money you make will not be worth the lost time during the most crucial time in your training. I am 2 months away and as I look back there is a lot of time I wish I could have back.
 
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$118k sounds very low for average overall salary.

Graduates of the residency program I am at are starting in the $200k range plus incentive.
 
$118k sounds very low for average overall salary.

Graduates of the residency program I am at are starting in the $200k range plus incentive.


how much are you getting at residency? What state are you at?
 
how much are you getting at residency? What state are you at?
Residents aren't making much and if you are curious you can see the residency pay scales on the CASPR website. The updated residency information will be available in July.

At this point you don't need to be worried about residency salaries. They are low and it is a training period.
 
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Since SDN has been a good resource for me over the years I figured I would chime in with my job search as I approach the end of residency.

First of all, I would say I went to a pretty good residency even if not a "big name". We do a bit of everything, but no major focus. Will finish with ~1300 cases.

For me, I started my search with no specific requirements, just wanted to find a fair opportunity which allowed me to use all of my training. I used all of the websites mentioned prior on here, a little word of mouth, and cold called a couple places.

In the end, I met with 5 private practices, one ortho group, two hospitals, and I talked with one MSG, but never flew out to interview. I did not recieve an offer from every one of these, but most developed enough to talk basic terms.

Private Practices:

One offered 100k, +30% after 325k collections. Small signing bonus and moving allowance. Health insurance. 2k cme. Didn't talk partnership with initial contract, but had pt base waiting. 15 days vacation.

Another, 100k with no bonus for 2 years. After 2 years eligible for partnership. Health insurance. CME covered if instate (didnt cover travel). Pt base waiting. 6 figure buy in for partnership. 2 weeks vacation.

125k+30%, i forget the threshold. They did offer some cme, health insurance, auto/gas reimbursement (had multiple locations) don'tremember the other specifics.

The other two were 90-100k with a bonus around 2 or 2.5 times, but I honestly didnt get very far in talks with them so I didnt get all the specifics.

Ortho group:

160k+bonus that was both % and referrals (PT) based. 5k moving expense. 6k cme. 15 days vacation with 6 more for cme. Health insurance.

MSG:

Did not talk any specific numbers, but were offering guaranteed salary with bonus structure for 1 year. Then production only. Eligible for profit sharing after 1 year. Moving allowance. Health insurance. Cell phone allowance. Seemed like a pretty good deal, but was on the other side of country.

Hospitals:

One of these I ultimately accepted, the other did not offer, but did talk some contract details as I interviewed...

200k base, wrvu bonus model. 25k signing bonus. Up to 20k quality assurances bonus. Generous student loan stipend for the 1st 3 years. Salary is guaranteed for 1st 3 years. Healthcare. 6 wks vacation. 401k matching. Cell phone allowance.

The other was similar, slightly smaller signing bonus and student loan stipend. Not sure if they offer quality assurance bonuses.

Hope someone finds this helpful, there are a wide variety of job opportunities out there. I do have some thoughts on what to look out for, but dont want to take up an entire page with one post.
 
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Since SDN has been a good resource for me over the years I figured I would chime in with my job search as I approach the end of residency.

First of all, I would say I went to a pretty good residency even if not a "big name". We do a bit of everything, but no major focus. Will finish with ~1300 cases.

For me, I started my search with no specific requirements, just wanted to find a fair opportunity which allowed me to use all of my training. I used all of the websites mentioned prior on here, a little word of mouth, and cold called a couple places.

In the end, I met with 5 private practices, one ortho group, two hospitals, and I talked with one MSG, but never flew out to interview. I did not recieve an offer from every one of these, but most developed enough to talk basic terms.

Private Practices:

One offered 100k, +30% after 325k collections. Small signing bonus and moving allowance. Health insurance. 2k cme. Didn't talk partnership with initial contract, but had pt base waiting. 15 days vacation.

Another, 100k with no bonus for 2 years. After 2 years eligible for partnership. Health insurance. CME covered if instate (didnt cover travel). Pt base waiting. 6 figure buy in for partnership. 2 weeks vacation.

125k+30%, i forget the threshold. They did offer some cme, health insurance, auto/gas reimbursement (had multiple locations) don'tremember the other specifics.

The other two were 90-100k with a bonus around 2 or 2.5 times, but I honestly didnt get very far in talks with them so I didnt get all the specifics.

Ortho group:

160k+bonus that was both % and referrals (PT) based. 5k moving expense. 6k cme. 15 days vacation with 6 more for cme. Health insurance.

MSG:

Did not talk any specific numbers, but were offering guaranteed salary with bonus structure for 1 year. Then production only. Eligible for profit sharing after 1 year. Moving allowance. Health insurance. Cell phone allowance. Seemed like a pretty good deal, but was on the other side of country.

Hospitals:

One of these I ultimately accepted, the other did not offer, but did talk some contract details as I interviewed...

200k base, wrvu bonus model. 25k signing bonus. Up to 20k quality assurances bonus. Generous student loan stipend for the 1st 3 years. Salary is guaranteed for 1st 3 years. Healthcare. 6 wks vacation. 401k matching. Cell phone allowance.

The other was similar, slightly smaller signing bonus and student loan stipend. Not sure if they offer quality assurance bonuses.

Hope someone finds this helpful, there are a wide variety of job opportunities out there. I do have some thoughts on what to look out for, but dont want to take up an entire page with one post.
Thanks for the great post msudpm, much appreciated. Good luck to you in your future career! It seems as though hospital jobs are the way to go, less stress and more pay. But obviously the trade off is never being your own boss. Would you say hospital jobs are hard to find...? Or is podiatry growing in hospitals in the future?
Thanks a lot for the help
 
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Thanks for the great post msudpm, much appreciated. Good luck to you in your future career! It seems as though hospital jobs are the way to go, less stress and more pay. But obviously the trade off is never being your own boss. Would you say hospital jobs are hard to find...? Or is podiatry growing in hospitals in the future?
Thanks a lot for the help

You're welcome. It is difficult to say whether hospital jobs are hard to find without speaking anecdotally. I met with 2 hospitals, one I cold called amd they just happened to be looking for someone 6 months later and the other opportunity I heard about from someone I knew who was working for the same hospital system at a different location. I will say that I know 6 people from my class and 2 more that I met through residency who all took jobs with hospitals this year. That is just people I talk to on a semiregular basis, I'm sure there are more.

As far as being "the way to go" every situation is different. There are PP opportunities out there that have a pt base waiting for you and expect minimal administrative work, but conversely some expect you to be very involved and built your practice from the ground up.

On the hospital side, you are essentially at their mercy as far as how much you work and Im sure there are some places that take advantage of that. And while my 6 weeks of vacation sound nice, I'm sure if I take all of them and fail to meet my rvu goals there will be a knock at my door.
 
You're welcome. It is difficult to say whether hospital jobs are hard to find without speaking anecdotally. I met with 2 hospitals, one I cold called amd they just happened to be looking for someone 6 months later and the other opportunity I heard about from someone I knew who was working for the same hospital system at a different location. I will say that I know 6 people from my class and 2 more that I met through residency who all took jobs with hospitals this year. That is just people I talk to on a semiregular basis, I'm sure there are more.

As far as being "the way to go" every situation is different. There are PP opportunities out there that have a pt base waiting for you and expect minimal administrative work, but conversely some expect you to be very involved and built your practice from the ground up.

On the hospital side, you are essentially at their mercy as far as how much you work and Im sure there are some places that take advantage of that. And while my 6 weeks of vacation sound nice, I'm sure if I take all of them and fail to meet my rvu goals there will be a knock at my door.


I assure you that there is stress associated with all jobs. It depends how much you contribute to that stress and it depends how you handle the stress. There are many advantages working for a hospital system, but as per msuDPMs post, you are not the boss. The hospital can, and likely will call all the shots. Hospitals don't hand out free money, so as per the prior post, if you aren't hitting your RVUs, there is no doubt that the pencil pushers will make sure that's resolved. Many hospitals will hire at a very nice starting salary, but that is often reviewed after the 2nd year and adjusted up or down depending on your RVU production. There IS a strong positive. RVUs are not based on insurance reimbursement so if you see Medicaid patients you are not penalized. In private practice, bonuses are often based on production. So if your employer decides he's going to treat all the high paying privately insured patients and he's going to send you all the Medicaid patients, it will impact your income. That's the beauty of RVUs, it's really based more on the work performed and not the quality of the insurance.
 
I know one program I visited (I shall leave it unnamed) that the 3rd year residents "daylighted" on a fairly regular basis by covering clinic for one of their attendings. This was in a state that allowed a full Podiatry license. I am not sure how billing or insurance was handled, but the pay was nice enough that the 3rd years would fight over the duties, and not allow 2nd years the opportunity. It all seemed sketchy to me, especially since they were essentially skipping surgical cases to go cover a clinic, but I'm sure they had bills to pay.
 
I know one program I visited (I shall leave it unnamed) that the 3rd year residents "daylighted" on a fairly regular basis by covering clinic for one of their attendings. This was in a state that allowed a full Podiatry license. I am not sure how billing or insurance was handled, but the pay was nice enough that the 3rd years would fight over the duties, and not allow 2nd years the opportunity. It all seemed sketchy to me, especially since they were essentially skipping surgical cases to go cover a clinic, but I'm sure they had bills to pay.

When you say states that allow full podiatry license are you referring to the license podiatry residents get to practice under the full scope the supervising physician?
 
ExperiencedDPM, you wouldn't happen to own one of those cars in your avatar, would you?
 
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ExperiencedDPM, you wouldn't happen to own one of those cars in your avatar, would you?

Can't, they aren't available yet. Some dealers are taking pre production orders.
 
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Since SDN has been a good resource for me over the years I figured I would chime in with my job search as I approach the end of residency.

First of all, I would say I went to a pretty good residency even if not a "big name". We do a bit of everything, but no major focus. Will finish with ~1300 cases.

For me, I started my search with no specific requirements, just wanted to find a fair opportunity which allowed me to use all of my training. I used all of the websites mentioned prior on here, a little word of mouth, and cold called a couple places.

In the end, I met with 5 private practices, one ortho group, two hospitals, and I talked with one MSG, but never flew out to interview. I did not recieve an offer from every one of these, but most developed enough to talk basic terms.

Private Practices:

One offered 100k, +30% after 325k collections. Small signing bonus and moving allowance. Health insurance. 2k cme. Didn't talk partnership with initial contract, but had pt base waiting. 15 days vacation.

Another, 100k with no bonus for 2 years. After 2 years eligible for partnership. Health insurance. CME covered if instate (didnt cover travel). Pt base waiting. 6 figure buy in for partnership. 2 weeks vacation.

125k+30%, i forget the threshold. They did offer some cme, health insurance, auto/gas reimbursement (had multiple locations) don'tremember the other specifics.

The other two were 90-100k with a bonus around 2 or 2.5 times, but I honestly didnt get very far in talks with them so I didnt get all the specifics.

Ortho group:

160k+bonus that was both % and referrals (PT) based. 5k moving expense. 6k cme. 15 days vacation with 6 more for cme. Health insurance.

MSG:

Did not talk any specific numbers, but were offering guaranteed salary with bonus structure for 1 year. Then production only. Eligible for profit sharing after 1 year. Moving allowance. Health insurance. Cell phone allowance. Seemed like a pretty good deal, but was on the other side of country.

Hospitals:

One of these I ultimately accepted, the other did not offer, but did talk some contract details as I interviewed...

200k base, wrvu bonus model. 25k signing bonus. Up to 20k quality assurances bonus. Generous student loan stipend for the 1st 3 years. Salary is guaranteed for 1st 3 years. Healthcare. 6 wks vacation. 401k matching. Cell phone allowance.

The other was similar, slightly smaller signing bonus and student loan stipend. Not sure if they offer quality assurance bonuses.

Hope someone finds this helpful, there are a wide variety of job opportunities out there. I do have some thoughts on what to look out for, but dont want to take up an entire page with one post.

@msuDPM, thank you for your helpful post! You've earned a $20 Amazon gift card for your positive contribution to the SDN community, and your post has been selected as our Spotlight Post in this week's newsletter. I will PM you your Amazon code.
 
Since SDN has been a good resource for me over the years I figured I would chime in with my job search as I approach the end of residency.

First of all, I would say I went to a pretty good residency even if not a "big name". We do a bit of everything, but no major focus. Will finish with ~1300 cases.

For me, I started my search with no specific requirements, just wanted to find a fair opportunity which allowed me to use all of my training. I used all of the websites mentioned prior on here, a little word of mouth, and cold called a couple places.

In the end, I met with 5 private practices, one ortho group, two hospitals, and I talked with one MSG, but never flew out to interview. I did not recieve an offer from every one of these, but most developed enough to talk basic terms.

Private Practices:

One offered 100k, +30% after 325k collections. Small signing bonus and moving allowance. Health insurance. 2k cme. Didn't talk partnership with initial contract, but had pt base waiting. 15 days vacation.

Another, 100k with no bonus for 2 years. After 2 years eligible for partnership. Health insurance. CME covered if instate (didnt cover travel). Pt base waiting. 6 figure buy in for partnership. 2 weeks vacation.

125k+30%, i forget the threshold. They did offer some cme, health insurance, auto/gas reimbursement (had multiple locations) don'tremember the other specifics.

The other two were 90-100k with a bonus around 2 or 2.5 times, but I honestly didnt get very far in talks with them so I didnt get all the specifics.

Ortho group:

160k+bonus that was both % and referrals (PT) based. 5k moving expense. 6k cme. 15 days vacation with 6 more for cme. Health insurance.

MSG:

Did not talk any specific numbers, but were offering guaranteed salary with bonus structure for 1 year. Then production only. Eligible for profit sharing after 1 year. Moving allowance. Health insurance. Cell phone allowance. Seemed like a pretty good deal, but was on the other side of country.

Hospitals:

One of these I ultimately accepted, the other did not offer, but did talk some contract details as I interviewed...

200k base, wrvu bonus model. 25k signing bonus. Up to 20k quality assurances bonus. Generous student loan stipend for the 1st 3 years. Salary is guaranteed for 1st 3 years. Healthcare. 6 wks vacation. 401k matching. Cell phone allowance.

The other was similar, slightly smaller signing bonus and student loan stipend. Not sure if they offer quality assurance bonuses.

Hope someone finds this helpful, there are a wide variety of job opportunities out there. I do have some thoughts on what to look out for, but dont want to take up an entire page with one post.

Hospitals seem to compensate Podiatric Physicians the most fairly compared to other physician specialties. I've attached the 2015 MGMA data (collected from 2014) with a rather small sample size for podiatric physicians. There are other MGMA studies with larger sample sizes but this one is the most up to date.

26 Pods in hospital practice for 3-12: avg anywhere between $260K-$290K
15 Pods in hospital practice 13+ years: avg $345K+
 

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Hospitals seem to compensate Podiatric Physicians the most fairly compared to other physician specialties. I've attached the 2015 MGMA data (collected from 2014) with a rather small sample size for podiatric physicians. There are other MGMA studies with larger sample sizes but this one is the most up to date.

26 Pods in hospital practice for 3-12: avg anywhere between $260K-$290K
15 Pods in hospital practice 13+ years: avg $345K+

Nice find! I wonder why there is missing data for pods.
 
Any chance you'd share a little on how you job searched or when you started looking? Also, congrats.

Thanks! I searched at the beginning of my 3rd year of residency, was open to anything, used a few online job search websites which I forget and weren't helpful, most helpful for me was the postings in the bottom of the pm news email posts, mostly for associate positions in private practice looking for immediate starting. I got my job through a pod friend so I got hooked up basically. feel free to pm me for details.
 
You can get these kinds of offers if you are willing to work in the middle of nowhere or the desert.

I'd be shocked if a podiatry resident was OFFERED this much money, their first year out, in a major metropolis where there are plenty of other MD/DO providers, who also perform foot and ankle surgery and can actually take call.

Key word "offered", not MAKING. I''m sure if you are busy enough and your contract includes incentives if you gross over a set value then it's most definitely common to earn over 200K your first year out. But OFFERS over 200K are few and far between unless you like living in Podunk, USA.

There are always exceptions to the rule. But that's what they are...exceptions. There are salaried positions at major hospitals. Which sounds nice but then they will probably be capped at a certain salary level...which is seen at the Kaiser hospitals in CA.
You can get these kinds of offers if you are willing to work in the middle of nowhere or the desert.

I'd be shocked if a podiatry resident was OFFERED this much money, their first year out, in a major metropolis where there are plenty of other MD/DO providers, who also perform foot and ankle surgery and can actually take call.

Key word "offered", not MAKING. I''m sure if you are busy enough and your contract includes incentives if you gross over a set value then it's most definitely common to earn over 200K your first year out. But OFFERS over 200K are few and far between unless you like living in Podunk, USA.

There are always exceptions to the rule. But that's what they are...exceptions. There are salaried positions at major hospitals. Which sounds nice but then they will probably be capped at a certain salary level...which is seen at the Kaiser hospitals in CA.
Contract signed 280K + RVU bonus and benefits. Living in a VERY nice part of the country.
Its there if you work for it.
 
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Wow congrats guys. Those numbers seem almost impossible to start with in CA
 
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