Cardiology salaries keep rising, outpacing consumer prices—interventional cardiologists see biggest jump
Compensation for cardiologists increased approximately 5% from 2022 to 2023, according to a new report from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA). This is far less than some specialties—pay for dermatologists went up more than 10%, for instance—but still ahead of the consumer price index (CPI), which jumped 3.4% during the same time.
The 2024 MGMA DataDive Provider Compensation and Productivity Data Report included data from more than 211,000 U.S. physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs). The 16-page report—available in full for free—includes insights into compensation, work relative value units (RVUs) and much more for a wide range of healthcare specialties.
Overall, primary care physicians, surgical specialists, nonsurgical specialists and APPs saw their median total compensation increase by 4.44%, 4.42%, 1.81% and 6.47%, respectively. Cardiologists were included in the primary care category.
Cardiologist pay was separated into three different specialties: invasive cardiology, invasive-interventional cardiology and noninvasive cardiology. Compensation increased from 2022 to 2023 for all three, climbing 3.76% for invasive cardiology, 6.8% for invasive-interventional cardiology and 4.71% for noninvasive cardiology. On average, that means compensation jumped approximately 5.09% for U.S. cardiologists.
Meanwhile, invasive cardiology saw work RVUs increase a whopping 16.25% compared to 5.89% for invasive-interventional cardiology and just 0.02% for noninvasive cardiology.
More and more medical groups are now linking quality to compensation
Another key finding included in the MGMA report—summarized by MGMA’s senior editorial manager, Chris Harrop—is the fact that more and more practices are using quality measures to help determine physician compensation. In fact, 50% of the 383 leaders who responded said they are using quality measures in that way, according to a separate poll MGMA published in April 2024. This is up from 47% who said they were using quality measures to guide compensation in May 2023.
“This latest poll signals the continuation of an almost predictably slow and steady incorporation of quality into compensation models amid a similarly glacial trend away from fee-for-service (FFS) and toward value-based arrangements,” according to the report.
Click here to view the full report.
Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.