Physician Salaries In New York: Reaching New Heights?

New York is known for being the city where dreamers come to make it big. Every expectation is just as high as the skyline, including the salaries.

If you’re going to be living and working as a physician in New York, you do need the money to afford the lifestyle. And you need availability, too, because job vacancies don’t open overnight.

Then again, we are talking about New York here, and the opportunities are endless. Not only is it home to some of the best hospitals in the country, like Mount Sinai, but it also has plenty of extensive training programs with the highest GME infrastructure in the entire country.

And we all know that is where the real money for a physician lies. Specialising and sub specialising are one of the best ways to increase your salary as a doctor.

But what are the physician salaries in New York looking like? How many physicians in New York are active, and in what specialty? And is the money enough to help support you through what is essentially heightened inflation and an even higher cost of living? Let’s discuss:

• Physician salaries in New York
• Active physicians and their field of specialization
• Physician’s opinions on working in New York

What Are Physicians Making in New York

On paper, New York seems to be doing great with its physicians and how they are compensated. There are plenty of doctors there who are earning easily in the millions every year and don’t feel like they’ll be slowing down anytime soon.

Of course, those doctors are highly specialized in their respective fields, and that’s why they get the money to match their years of training. For example, the highest paid physician in New York is a urologist who also worked in robotics surgery.

Urology is one of the highest-paid specialties in New York, and the robotics training is just the cherry on top.

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But what about if you are just starting your residency? What specialties are paying the big bucks on average? Well, you have your usual suspects of orthopedic surgery and cardiology earning above $500k, but anesthesia and dermatology aren’t far behind.

Here’s a breakdown of physician salaries in New York based on specialty:

The high salaries look enticing, but it is easy to forget that not every doctor will earn the same. The average physician salary in New York is $290,000 per annum or $151 per hour. And if you’re just starting your residency, you can expect to make a little over half of that, at $123,000 every year.

And between the abysmal rent, which is above $21,834 since 2022 and the high cost of living, that salary doesn’t stretch too far.

Is New York One Of The Worst States For Doctors?

Yes. I’m not even going to sugarcoat it because, in 2022, New York was deemed the 2nd worst state for doctors to practice in.

Evidence shows that New York is one of the least favorable places for physicians to settle based on factors such as average salary, state of the public health system, and the number of public health facilities available for job opportunities and patient traffic management.

While the healthcare system across the U.S. generally isn’t doing well, New York has a few more hang-ups than most. Yes, there is a physician shortage going on everywhere, but the number of active physicians in New York showcases why it’s hitting harder in urban areas.

The healthcare system of any state placing a heavy emphasis on internal medicine when it comes to physician density isn’t all that surprising. But 11,000 isn’t that big of a number when you compare it to the entire population of New York, which is a whopping 8 million and growing.

When you’re overburdened and overworked, a high salary is something that could alleviate a little of the pain. But that doesn’t even matter because while physician salaries in New York look good on paper, they are on the low end of the spectrum when adjusted for the cost of living and inflation.

And don’t even get me started on malpractice liability, where the Big Apple has one of the highest malpractice payouts per capita. So, make sure to have that malpractice insurance in check if you can even afford it.

Working in a New York hospital is a beast unto itself. The problem is that the hospital standards themselves fail miserably, with the Empire State’s public-run facilities getting slammed when it comes to patient safety.

Many hospitals fail to implement the best medical practices, and state fines and rising Medicare costs have left a shallow budget to cover the shortcomings. The healthcare system itself is going under, so how do doctors cope with that?

It isn’t that New York itself has more issues than anywhere else, and that’s what hinders doctors from pursuing a medical career there. It’s the demoralizing state of the healthcare system without much reward to go on. It’s burning our fraternity out in an unprecedented way.

Is There A Way To Fix This?

Trying to ‘fix healthcare’ is a tall order, especially in this current socio economic climate. Rural areas already suffer physician shortages, let alone legislative measures to fix that.

New York has the benefit of being a state with many eyes on it. It has a dense population and many more people on the numerous healthcare boards, including physicians who see the plight of other physicians and know where the issues lie.

Irrespective of where you stand income-wise, everyone working in medicine, from healthcare workers to management, agrees that the healthcare system needs an upgrade. And it feels like the government does occasionally listen.

Meanwhile, doctors themselves have taken up the mantle to improve things when it comes to understaffing in the public sector. They are also asking for better benefits to retain the doctors who come to New York for training and leave because the circumstances are just not substantial enough for them to stay.

There’s also a conversation about licensing and making it easier for doctors to practice in New York through the state joining the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, leading to a bigger physician workforce to tackle the shortage issues currently ongoing.

There is no clear-cut answer to how New York became one of the least favorable states for physicians to practice in despite its heavy salary packages. But more people are speaking up about the current state of healthcare, which at least means change is on the way.