Salaries fall for nurses and executives while doctors and health IT pros pay rises
Healthcare executives saw salaries decrease during the last year, even though pay for doctors and physician assistants rose. The good news for healthcare IT professionals? Their salaries also expanded.
Pay for executives and nurses, in fact, dropped between 2015 and 2016 according to Health eCareers' 2016 Healthcare Salary Guide, which surveyed 19,754 healthcare professionals – and also found that 30 percent are looking for a new job.
"This trend could, at least in part, be attributed to the physician shortage, which is causing healthcare providers to hire Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants in larger numbers, and having to pay them more to be competitive," Health eCareer's managing director Bryan Bassett said.
[Also: How stressed out are health IT pros today? Extremely, study says]
Physician assistants, for instance, earned an average of $105,856 during the time period, a 4.3 percent increase, while nurse practitioners received $100,549, marking a 5.3 percent uptick. And physicians’ salaries rose 2.5 percent to $255,648.
Healthcare IT professionals on average were compensated $91,251, a 2.2 percent increase.
Hospital and healthcare executives, on the other hand, were paid $134,632, constituting a 12.9 percent decrease and registered nurses received $61,875 for a 3.1 percent dip.
[Also: Health IT gender pay gap grows wider, ten-year study finds]
Of those studied, 29 percent said they anticipate changing employers in the next year, 30 percent have no plans to change and 41 percent are unsure. In addition, 86 percent are confident they could find a new position.
The top reasons that respondents said they are seeking new employment were higher pay, more rewarding and challenging work, better working hours and wanting to be part of a different organization.
“Healthcare employers have an opportunity to sway those 41 percent who are on the fence about leaving,” Bassett added. “It’s not just about higher pay. They could be incented with more rewarding or challenging tasks, or by retooling their work hours.”
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