Anesthesiologist Salaries: You Asked, We Answered! See Our Top 3 Tips to Achieve Maximum Compensation
One question we hear routinely from clients and in the field is: how does my salary compare to others? On average, Anesthesiologists earn ($261,730), almost five-times the average annual salary for all occupations ($53,490) according to Forbes. Anesthesiologist salaries vary greatly throughout the US; experience, location and case mix are just a few of the factors that contribute to the gap. According to Careermatch.com, the lower 10% of anesthesiologists make about $145,000/year while others can make $400,000 and above.
Working with anesthesiologists for almost 50 years and being deeply involved with their finances has given us valuable insight into how to support our clients with achieving the highest possible salary. Below are the three drivers that contribute to higher salaries: According to an article recently published by Becker’s, anesthesiologist salaries dropped 8% over the last year; below are our tips for how you can make up that difference:
Tip #1 to Maximize your Anesthesia Salary: Practice Independence
Private practice anesthesiologists, on average, make close to $100,000 more a year compared to their employed colleagues. Most private practices have a productivity-based compensation model or “eat what you kill”, in essence, the more you work, the more you will get paid. In that regard, private practices retain more of the revenue they generate and have far more control over their slice of the proverbial pie. In addition, many private practices have incentives that employed models simply don’t have such as incentivizing providers to be more operationally efficient or call pay.
Private anesthesiology groups also have control over how they diversify their income. For example, a private practice typically has the ability to provide services at multiple hospitals and can even provide services at non-affiliated ASCs or eye centers. Many anesthesiologists also choose to “moonlight” to increase their anesthesia salary by providing services at plastic surgeon offices or dental offices.
Tip #2 to Maximize Your Anesthesia Salary: Improve Payer Contracts
Payer contracts are a solid contributor to increasing your take home pay and negotiating these contracts is often overlooked. Dependent on your payer mix, negotiating increases on an annual basis for your contracts and flat fees is a must. Before negotiations commence, it’s important to have data to support your increase. You need to be armed with patient satisfaction scores, the number and types of anesthetics performed for that particular payer and, most importantly, knowledge of the going rate in your market/region.
Tip #3 to Maximize Your Anesthesia Salary: Having the Right Anesthesia Billing Partner.
Having the right billing partner is key to ensuring your salary is at the top of that sliding scale. Anesthesiology is the one profession that can significantly reduce overhead since they typically see patients for the first time during the pre-operative evaluation before surgery. Fusion Anesthesia Solutions provides a turn-key solution to anesthesia groups and serves as their infrastructure. We provide our clients with a breadth of services from billing to payroll and tax preparation/filing ultimately reducing your collections cost and increasing your take-home pay. Clients that switch to Fusion Anesthesia typically increase their revenue from 8-15%.
Outsourced billing vendors are incentivized to collect your money but beware, not all vendors are created equal. We’ve worked with groups that switched to us from other billing vendors, both big and small, and it is clear most vendors go after the low hanging fruit.
At Fusion Anesthesia, we have been exclusively serving anesthesia providers for almost 50 years. We fight to collect every penny that you are owed. We have spent more than four decades perfecting the process of maximizing anesthesia revenue for our clients.
Visit www.FusionAnesthesia.com for more info or contact sales@FusionAnesthesia.com.