According to findings in the American Medical Group Association’s (AMGA) 2007 Medical Group Compensation and Financial Survey, most specialties saw modest increases in compensation in 2006. In that year, 92 percent of the specialties experienced increases in compensation, with the overall average increase around 4.8 percent. The primary care specialties saw about a 4 percent increase in 2006, while other medical and surgical specialties averaged around 6 percent. The survey also found that, on average, only organizations in the Western region were operating at a profit ($17,317 per physician), whereas organizations in the Southern region were operating at a significant loss (-$6,049 per physician).
The survey found that during 2006 the specialties experiencing the largest increases in compensation were pulmonary disease (11.51 percent), infectious disease (9.63 percent), psychiatry (7.54 percent), and cardiology-cath lab (7.08 percent). Interestingly, cardiac/thoracic surgery saw one of the largest decreases in compensation in 2006 (-2.13 percent), after having one of the largest increases in 2005 (11.47 percent), and cardiology saw only a modest increase in 2006 (1.99 percent) after a substantial increase in 2005 (10.21 percent). Read the press release.
