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What is the best path to take to make as much money as possible as a PA?


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I'm soon to graduate from a well-respected business school with a supply chain management and marketing double. I am interested in practicing medicine and PA is an attractive option. I really have no interest in working anywhere other than healthcare, and truthfully, I want to clinically practice. I am looking for a fulfilling career where I help people in my day to day.

 

I've pretty much ruled out medical school because of extensive loans, time commitment, and a general advising to avoid it at all costs from a cardio surgeon friend of the family. He says PA/NP is the way to go right now with the changing state of healthcare.

 

I am a financially ambitious individual and I would be looking to max out my income potential as a PA. I want to at least double the average PA salary if possible. What would be the best speciality/way to do this? Could I take call and work 70-80 hours a week while I'm young?

 

Additionally, I would love to put my business acumen to work and be management of a practice as well. Would this supplement income? Any thoughts on managing as a PA?

 

The only thing holding me back from PA is I'm worried it would be a challenge to raise a family on the income in the area of the country I live. What would be the absolute max a PA could earn if they took call, worked big hours, and managed a practice?

 

Thanks for the advice! I know this is a lot.

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I feel I may have been misleading in my post. I would not be happy doing anything else. I have considered going the business side of pharma or device companies, but it still feels "off" to me. I certainly wouldn't put financial goals above patients.

 

Money has to be considered in any profession and all I'm saying is in my area 90-100k would be tough to raise a family.

 

My post isn't one about using medicine and people for financial gain. It's about how can I do what I think I'm meant to do while making enough to support a family in one of the most expensive places to live in the country. I want to be the best PA I can be, and for me that means excelling both clinically and financially, which I am assuming is not mutually exclusive.

 

If I've offended anyone above please take my appologies and I hope this better explains what I'm going for.

 

Thanks :)

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I was an Air Traffic Controller and made a really high salary. In college I asked my professor this same type question. What facility can I go work at and make the most money. He told me if you don't love the work it will never be enough. So I went ahead with my plan and burnt out in three years. If your not interested in helping people more than making money you will never be happy but worse you will be putting the safety of people behind your love for money and that can be very dangerous.

 

Someone with your ambition could go work in a number of other types of medical industries and make a lot of money. It sounds like your better suited for being a drug rep or medical equipment rep, both have huge income potential and you would not require anymore schooling, in fact what you have is desirable. Time is money right!

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I agree with scoped.  He set his priority  already.  It is not a bad one but should not be #1 if you practice as a PA.

PS  You can easily double the "average" salary in any of the specialties by working hard, long hours, and after 5-10 years you would be at the top of your game.

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Well money is a big factor to consider. All said the right things above so I won't go there.

 

Urgent care or EM sounds more doable for over times and extra shifts. Having a full time where you can work 12 hour shifts helps to find a part time job. Ideally a full time EM for a number of years than working urgent care on the side would make sense to "maximize" income potential.

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I was an Air Traffic Controller and made a really high salary. In college I asked my professor this same type question. What facility can I go work at and make the most money. He told me if you don't love the work it will never be enough. So I went ahead with my plan and burnt out in three years. If your not interested in helping people more than making money you will never be happy but worse you will be putting the safety of people behind your love for money and that can be very dangerous.

 

Someone with your ambition could go work in a number of other types of medical industries and make a lot of money. It sounds like your better suited for being a drug rep or medical equipment rep, both have huge income potential and you would not require anymore schooling, in fact what you have is desirable. Time is money right!

 

 

I agree with scoped.  He set his priority  already.  It is not a bad one but should not be #1 if you practice as a PA.

PS  You can easily double the "average" salary in any of the specialties by working hard, long hours, and after 5-10 years you would be at the top of your game.

 

 

plain and simple - - if money is the motivator - avoid medicine

 

you don't belong caring for our patients

 

I feel I may have been misleading in my post. I would not be happy doing anything else. I have considered going the business side of pharma or device companies, but it still feels "off" to me. I certainly wouldn't put financial goals above patients.

 

Money has to be considered in any profession and all I'm saying is in my area 90-100k would be tough to raise a family.

 

My post isn't one about using medicine and people for financial gain. It's about how can I do what I think I'm meant to do while making enough to support a family in one of the most expensive places to live in the country. I want to be the best PA I can be, and for me that means excelling both clinically and financially, which I am assuming is not mutually exclusive.

 

If I've offended anyone above please take my appologies and I hope this better explains what I'm going for.

 

Thanks :)

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Well money is a big factor to consider. All said the right things above so I won't go there.

 

Urgent care or EM sounds more doable for over times and extra shifts. Having a full time where you can work 12 hour shifts helps to find a part time job. Ideally a full time EM for a number of years than working urgent care on the side would make sense to "maximize" income potential.

 

Thank you for this. The more I think about it I think I was too rough with the word usage in my original post; Example being "maximize" being used. I think I am so exposed to such words through my schooling that it found its way into my post on account of my educational background.

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There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money.  Money is not evil.  The love of money is the root of evil so that is where you set your priorities to understand what the motivation is.  Patients vs. Money?  You can do both and then always be aware of where you are at personally.  Does the drive to make more money compromise your family life? Does it compromise your leisure time? Time with family and children or if you have no children does it compromise you developing a really strong marriage or relationship with that special other?  Does the drive for money consume you?  That is the question. 

 

You do not always have to make money by working crazy hours.  Maximize investments and retirement plans that might be offered you as an employee.  Diversify your interests.  Develop a side business.  Be smart in how you handle money.  Be a steward of what you have.  Go to school on the least amount of loans possible.  Pay off your debt.  I do not need to tell you any of this as you probably learned it already in your business school. 

 

You can always move to a less expensive area of the country, too. 

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How do you not have the tools to answer this question given your background?  And I guess next to no one has families in your "city" if an income of 100k isn't enough for that.

 

I'm looking for more insight specifically in regard to what's possible in the profession. There are plenty of families in the area I grew up, but they are bankers with household income easily north of 250k. I didn't mean to offend here but I feel like I've struck a cord with a few of the posters here.

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When the average starting salary is not $100K, you are setting yourself up for failure by expecting it. EM is probably the highest paid specialty ATM, but that's for experienced EM PAs, not business school trained no prior medical experience ones.....

 

Thank you for the reply! I saw the latest report with EM overtaking derm. I'm referencing mid career salary in this post, though.  Starting salary is more than acceptable.

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Dont apologize about wanting to make money.

I do too.

You do have to balance your desire to have a nice lifestyle with your altruistic goals in medicine.

In our country it is a big business. In other countries a service to the population and not the potential money maker it is in the states.

There are a lot of business opportunities to be had in medicine for a PA.

The origins are very compassionate and humanitarian. Those origins can still be honored while you make some cash.

In fact I would say the profession needs some PAs whom are also MBAs to make more inroads into the business side of medicine.

As for pissing off some on this forum, who cares? It's the internet, people are angry all the time. If it bothers you, reregister under a different screen name.

More likely whatever you wrote above will get forgotten after a few dozen other posts. And I think your questions are not unreasonable given the financial investment you have already made in your education along with the future investment of PA school.

While the internet is written in ink, someone actually has to take the time to find it to read.

I can think of better things to do.

G Brothers PA-C

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I would consider correctional medicine working directly for the DOC - don't go with agency. I did agency with the DOC and made about 45$ an hour though if I worked directly with them I would have made double. A girlfriend of mine in San Antonio TX also just told me last week about a position offered to her paying 200k (I'm not kidding - I saw the physical email) working with women and children who have escaped over the Mexican border. The hours were Monday-Friday from 3-11 pm. I don't know yet weather she will explore the opportunity or not. Honestly the highest paying are the least desirable jobs - such as ones I've stated above. I made bank working in pain management in the inner city for 3 years - my boss paid me cash and then gave me a 1099 then I was able to write off a lot of tax as "expenses". He in turn got to write off my income on his tax. A sort of symbiotic relationship if you will. I am like you - very money conscious. I'm now using the cash sum I've made to buy an apartment building. I close this month! Woohoo!

 

May I ask where you are living? I have worked in several parts of the country and may be able to give more advice if you disclose where you are living currently. PA employment opportunity varies vastly based on city accordingly.

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Consider CRNA or AA, they make more than other advance practice providers. I think you should really figure out why you feel like you need twice the average PA salary. It's almost as if you just looked at the averages and decided it would be nice to make double. While you can make 200k as a PA like EMEDPA said you have to work far more than average. Im not a PA but I do work with patients all day as an EMT and it's stressful. I work three 12 hour shifts a week and I'm wiped by the end.

You mentioned surgery and emergency medicine as interests, both pretty much guarantee working a good portion of your career at night. I dont think it's reasonable to assume that once entering these fields you can just work significantly more than your coworkers so you can get your dream salary. It's not a matter of whether or not you could do it, its a matter of whether or not you should.An exhausted provider is not pleasant to work with and they're more likely to miss that atypical presentation of something nasty at 3 in the morning. And thats just work, Im sure your social/family life would take a big hit as well. In a survey I read once it found that happiness did not increase with salary after 75k a year. And I think theres an easy argument that youd be less happy making 180k working non stop then you would at 100-120k working 40 hours a week.

I think you should do two things. One is find a way to get healthcare experience to see if you wt to spend your life doing this. I suggest EMT as it's a short course and you get exposure to some interesting cases. The second is to really ask yourself why you feel the need to make so much. You say you doubt you can live comfortable off of 100k? Say your're a senior EM PA making 120K a year, your wife has a decent job as well and makes 50k a year. You conservatively have the buying power of $510k for your home. I grew up in the third most expensive county in the country and half a million still bought you a decent place to lay your head down at night.

I'm not trying to be condescending and I apologize if it came off that way. But like you pointed out with the business exec language that you use I think you just have a business oriented thought process. There's nothing wrong with that and I understand the desire to earn a decent living. It's one of the reasons why I plan on leaving EMS to practice medicine as a PA and live a much healthier and more comfortable life. Just keep an open mind 

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Wanting to maximize money in "medicine" often means doing despicable things, like selling the latest fountain-of-youth craze (is it still "low T" this year?) with little to no regard for the long-term consequences.  It absolutely does not involve care for the poor and downtrodden--that doesn't pay well at all.

 

As someone who had a good career in IT and then evaporated my income for 2.5 years of school to end up making 1/3rd less, I have very little stomach for people who want to maximize their income in medicine.  Yes, everyone should make a good living, especially if they're skilled in a needed specialty.  But maximizing income often involves abusing far more than just your time--it means ignoring patient questions to get onto the next visit, giving as little of your effort as possible for the maximum financial return.

 

Rethink how you measure your rewards in life.  In America, money is the state religion: kill someone for money, and you get less jail time than if you killed them because of an ethnic or religious feud, even though they're just as dead.  If you can go to your job happy, and come home weary knowing you did good for the people who needed you, and sleep the sleep of the righteous, you may find the need for a two-week yearly cruise to put the guilt behind you that much less.  It's your choice.

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Join AAPA and get the salary report, or better yet, buy the MGMA salary report. That is where you will find your answer. Add some overtime and you can make more. 

 

But yeah...do something you love, before you do something for money, if you can do both, than even better. Just chasing the dollar will get old and before you know it you'll be at the end of your life wondering what happened. 

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I have an MBA, and I'm a first-year PA student right now.

When my MBA classmates heard I wanted to drop everything and go to PA school, the big question they asked me was "why would you go into a career where your earnings have an absolute ceiling? Didn't your MBA teach you anything?"

 

I pointed out to them that as a PA, I would have a purpose, I could help people AND support my family. I pointed out to them that I had more fun and had more fulfilling days as an MA working for $10/hour than I did making $100k plus as a project manager. Mind you, I'm not terribly interested in working for free or cheap, but I think there's something to following a fulfilling path rather than chasing green. I'll also allow that I'm 40, and have a couple of years of occasionally useful wisdom under my belt (not as many as Barry, but I'll get there!)....

I found out a long time ago that if you're chasing money itself, you'll never have enough. No matter how much you fill that vessel, it always has a hole in the bottom. Spent a lot of years doing stuff I didn't really like for a paycheck that never seemed like it was quite enough to fill the void. I figure I can make myself useful to an employer that is looking for a good PA, and a team leader, and maybe someone that can help out in finances as well. Can't hurt -- and they may even pay me more in my later years to be that guy instead of the 12-hour-shift new grad I'll be next year.

 

If you want to max your income, you'll find ways to do it. It's not magic, but you'll have to ask yourself what the price of that income REALLY is. Time with family/loved ones? Lost sleep? Lost sanity? Increased stress? Cutting your patient times down to zero?

Everything has a price, and it's all a big tradeoff. I plan to work very hard in my first couple of years out in order to learn as much as I can out of the gate, and to get out of student debt. After that, I plan to work very hard to save up for a home. After that, I'll work hard to continue saving for retirement. But I'll also pepper that in with spending time with my wife and family, getting rest, and staying as healthy as I can. 

Your mileage may vary, but the existence and magnitude of prices and payoffs never will.

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agree with Rocketpropelled.

When I graduated PA school I had a decent amount of debt and wanted to pay it off. After paying it off (except for the things like mortgage, etc) I was still working 200+ hrs/mo even though I didn't really need to. working a lot of hours becomes self-perpetuating. you've always done it so you always do it. people know they can count on you to cover shifts at short notice, etc.

Over the last year or 2 I've gotten better at cutting down my hours. school forced some of that, and it was a positive change. my wife has already told me not to pick up more shifts when done with school at the end of the summer. I've cut down from 16 shifts/mo at my regular job to 9. I still work shifts at per diem jobs that I enjoy far more than my regular job and hope to transition to one of them full time at some point. I'm still working "full time hours" despite cutting way back, but now have a lot more time to spend with my family, and when done with school will be able to incorporate more running back into my schedule. also , as I have beome a senior PA my pay rate has increased significantly. I now make about 3x my starting hourly rate almost 20 years ago.

sure, I could work 24 days/mo and make 200k/yr but it isn't worth it. Money alone can not buy happiness. so, for now I will concentrate on working long shifts, but fewer days/mo. In fact I just worked out a deal with my regular job to work 14 hr shifts instead of 12's, but less days/mo.

spending less on stupid stuff is a first step towards saving money and working less. don't buy 4 dollar coffees and 6 dollar sandwiches every day at work. sure, I still enjoy the occasional SBucks coffee (like the new flat white...yum....) , but it's amazing how much more money is in your pocket at the end of the week if you don't waste it on silly stuff.

don't drive a BMW when a honda or suburu meets all your needs....I work with a PA who drives a BMW who is constantly stressing about the 600/mo car payment....guess what? my 2002 honda bought for cash still runs just fine.....

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agree with Rocketpropelled.

When I graduated PA school I had a decent amount of debt and wanted to pay it off. After paying it off (except for the things like mortgage, etc) I was still working 200+ hrs/mo even though I didn't really need to. working a lot of hours becomes self-perpetuating. you've always done it so you always do it. people know they can count on you to cover shifts at short notice, etc.

Over the last year or 2 I've gotten better at cutting down my hours. school forced some of that, and it was a positive change. my wife has already told me not to pick up more shifts when done with school at the end of the summer. I've cut down from 16 shifts/mo at my regular job to 9. I still work shifts at per diem jobs that I enjoy far more than my regular job and hope to transition to one of them full time at some point. I'm still working "full time hours" despite cutting way back, but now have a lot more time to spend with my family, and when done with school will be able to incorporate more running back into my schedule. also , as I have beome a senior PA my pay rate has increased significantly. I now make about 3x my starting hourly rate almost 20 years ago.

sure, I could work 24 days/mo and make 200k/yr but it isn't worth it. Money alone can not buy happiness. so, for now I will concentrate on working long shifts, but fewer days/mo. In fact I just worked out a deal with my regular job to work 14 hr shifts instead of 12's, but less days/mo.

spending less on stupid stuff is a first step towards saving money and working less. don't buy 4 dollar coffees and 6 dollar sandwiches every day at work. sure, I still enjoy the occasional SBucks coffee (like the new flat white...yum....) , but it's amazing how much more money is in your pocket at the end of the week if you don't waste it on silly stuff.

don't drive a BMW when a honda or suburu meets all your needs....I work with a PA who drives a BMW who is constantly stressing about the 600/mo car payment....guess what? my 2002 honda bought for cash still runs just fine.....

 

 

 

Well put

 

 

 

 

heard it once and have repeated it many times.....

 

do you know the secret to being rich?  Spending less then you make!

 

 

 

 

The worst year of being a PA was the year I made the most.....

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Well put

The worst year of being a PA was the year I made the most.....

yup, me too. 2 full time jobs and going to school....2002...the year I bought that honda for cash.....

come to think of it, I actually made a bit more this year, but have been working smarter, not harder....and as mentioned, I make a lot more/hr now than I did then.

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agree with Rocketpropelled.

When I graduated PA school I had a decent amount of debt and wanted to pay it off. After paying it off (except for the things like mortgage, etc) I was still working 200+ hrs/mo even though I didn't really need to. working a lot of hours becomes self-perpetuating. you've always done it so you always do it. people know they can count on you to cover shifts at short notice, etc.

Over the last year or 2 I've gotten better at cutting down my hours. school forced some of that, and it was a positive change. my wife has already told me not to pick up more shifts when done with school at the end of the summer. I've cut down from 16 shifts/mo at my regular job to 9. I still work shifts at per diem jobs that I enjoy far more than my regular job and hope to transition to one of them full time at some point. I'm still working "full time hours" despite cutting way back, but now have a lot more time to spend with my family, and when done with school will be able to incorporate more running back into my schedule. also , as I have beome a senior PA my pay rate has increased significantly. I now make about 3x my starting hourly rate almost 20 years ago.

sure, I could work 24 days/mo and make 200k/yr but it isn't worth it. Money alone can not buy happiness. so, for now I will concentrate on working long shifts, but fewer days/mo. In fact I just worked out a deal with my regular job to work 14 hr shifts instead of 12's, but less days/mo.

spending less on stupid stuff is a first step towards saving money and working less. don't buy 4 dollar coffees and 6 dollar sandwiches every day at work. sure, I still enjoy the occasional SBucks coffee (like the new flat white...yum....) , but it's amazing how much more money is in your pocket at the end of the week if you don't waste it on silly stuff.

don't drive a BMW when a honda or suburu meets all your needs....I work with a PA who drives a BMW who is constantly stressing about the 600/mo car payment....guess what? my 2002 honda bought for cash still runs just fine.....

Maybe this is just me, but I don't think a $600/mo car payment is that bad. I could easily swing that today with no change in my lifestyle and still be able to save a decent amount of money.

 

Of course, being single with no kids certainly helps here lol.

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Maybe this is just me, but I don't think a $600/mo car payment is that bad. I could easily swing that today with no change in my lifestyle and still be able to save a decent amount of money.

 

Of course, being single with no kids certainly helps here lol.

that PA also pays 2 mortgages and has > 200k student loans from undergrad and pa school. she is single without kids too....she has to make 65-70/hr + and work overtime just to keep her head above water. I can take less money at one of my per rural diem jobs because I like working there and always learn something every shift

it's all about priorities. If I was single I could live off less than 1/2 of my current income, probably 1/3.

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