Doc pay resumes upward march after prior year's slowdown

Cardiologist Dr. Edward Fry recalls making one-sixth as much as top earners in his field when he began practicing medicine in 1990.

Today, he says, beginning cardiologists typically start out earning as much as two-thirds the salary of a full partner at his practice, which is a part of Ascension Health. “The starting salaries of especially specialists coming out now are way higher relative to the top earners than when I started 25 years ago,” said Fry, chair of cardiology at Indianapolis-based St. Vincent Medical Group. 

Fry's field, invasive cardiology, is one of 20 physician specialties that received a pay hike in 2014. Only three specialties saw their average pay decline from 2013 to 2014, according to Modern Healthcare's 22nd annual Physician Compensation Survey.

The largest pay increase last year was in urology, where compensation rose 5.25% to an average of $423,260. Invasive cardiology saw the second-largest increase, at 4.76%, followed by dermatology at 4.7%, and gastroenterology at 4.2%. Radiation oncology rounded out the top five with an average increase of 3.92%. 

Of the specialties that saw a pay increase in 2014, 16 averaged below 4%. Of the three specialties that saw a decrease in compensation in 2014, oncology/hematology had the biggest decline at 1.97%, followed by plastic surgery, which fell by 0.15%, and obstetrics/gynecology with a 0.13% decrease. 

In 2014, 19 specialties received a pay boost that exceeded the consumer inflation rate of 1.6%. In contrast, in 2013 only five out of 12 specialties got a pay hike that exceeded the Consumer Price Index of 1.5%.