06/03/2025    Mark Jones, DPM

New Student Enrollment Campaign (John S. Steinberg, DPM)

I have served as a medical director for a large
physician group as well as the podiatry directory
in the hospital's Orthopedic & Spine center. I
assisted in group development and physician
recruitment and contracting. When contracting, we
reviewed MGMA data which is designed around group
model compensation. Their data does not reflect
accurate private practice model salaries. In
other words, MGMA tabulates for compensation
taking into account downstream revenues. Where an
MGMA compensated podiatrist would be at a higher
tier (300k+) vs the independent podiatrist range
of 150-200K. MGMA assumes, estimated, avg of 100k
loss per provider on the professional component
service given high cost of overhead in a system
practice.

Therefore, in all truth, the group model
compensates on downstream revenue (i.e., OR
revenue, MRI revenue, Admission revenue, etc.).
Unless a private physician has access to
investment in a surgical center or the like,
compensation for private practice physicians
cannot keep pace. As far as recruiting, one need
only look at our ACFAS jobs board and see the
number of Ortho Foot & Ankle positions available
(DPMs need not apply) to see the disparity in
salaries offered. Ortho F&A are more than 2x the
group model compensation for a surgical DPM. It
is true that training is not apples to apples, but
the cases being performed are.

Podiatry has both an identity problem and a
compensation problem. We all know that surgery is
not fairly compensated and according to even
orthopedic numbers, over the last 20 years foot
and ankle surgical reimbursement is down almost
47%. In fact, clinical practice revenue often does
exceed surgical practice revenue when in solo
practice (without the downstream revenue access).
So, why would one go into podiatry when it's much
more lucrative to follow the orthopedic route. My
guess is that as the future moves on the DPM
degree will be forced to focus mostly on surgery
and wound care as second tier providers (NPs and
the like) will encroach on routine foot care and
non-surgical care. In the end, it's
simple...follow the money.

Mark Jones, DPM, Hammond, IN

There are no more messages in this thread.