A Chief Medical Officer (CMO) is a person who manages and supervises the doctors and other healthcare staff working in a medical facility. A chief medical officer has to attend all the board meetings of the hospital and is answerable directly to the administration and board of directors of the said medical facility. He is also responsible for making improvements in the hospital, making policies, rules, and regulations, and dealing with other crucial matters of the said facility.
A person who is at such an important designation must be having good earnings. One might wonder how much does a chief medical officer make and what would be his salary annually? To sum it up, a chief medical officer of course makes great earnings as it takes years to get to this position. Let’s find out more.
How much does a chief medical officer make?
It is very interesting to know that when a trained physician decides to make a career detour toward becoming a chief medical officer the foremost question that will hit his mind would be how much does a chief medical officer make? This might not be an important question but of course, it is of great concern as a physician thinks of changing his career path when he is in the mid of his career.
This transition should be very calculated as any kind of reduction in the income might not go well with the kind of lifestyle he has been living previously.
Let’s split the salaries given to executives in the medical and healthcare sector to understand more how well the chief medical officers are compensated for their services.
Executive salaries
As mentioned above, the chief medical officers are working at the executive level and their responsibilities, work duties, and job description must match their stature and caliber.
The Cejka Executive Search and the American Association for Physician Leadership released data on the average salaries of executive posts in the medical and healthcare sector. They are:
- The average salary for a chief executive officer who is a physician as well is $350,000
- The highest paid physicians working at executive posts earned about $499,000 and this included the executives working as Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Medical Officer, Chief Integration Officer, and Chief Innovation Officer.
- The chief quality officer or patient safety officer earned $375,000
- Medical officers in executive positions earn $388,000 annually
- The chief medical information officer earns $372,500 on an annual basis
- The other CEOs have an average income of about $437,500 on an annual basis.
Clinical salaries
Clinical salaries are given to healthcare providers and physicians who work in different medical specialties. There are a lot of surveys and data available that will state what are the current clinical salaries for the medical staff.
The clinical salaries are heavily affected by the number of medical procedures conducted by the physicians. The salaries are based upon the number of hours spent working, how many days in a month were spent in the office as well as the number of emergency cases depending upon the designated specialties of the physicians.
The clinical salaries heavily depend on the above-mentioned characteristics therefore they vary from physician to physician.
When the graphs and stats were compared regarding the clinical salaries of different physicians then it was noticed that the medical practitioners working in the primary care sector or in the subspecialties of medicine make more income as compared to the other physicians once they move a step ahead to the executive post.
Final thoughts
When a person is considering switching career paths or opting for an executive position, he should take a lot of aspects into consideration apart from the income.
The chief executive officer post comes with a lot of responsibilities and it will get difficult to balance between work and home life. Personal life might suffer, and the person might miss milestones of his growing children as time never comes back.
So if the physician is really ready and knows that he will be able to balance between work and home then there should be no hurdle between him and the executive post. With great responsibilities come great powers and of course, if the income will increase so will the quality of life.
For a physician to be promoted on an executive level means a step into a grand life as the income increases compared to a normal health practitioner. However, executive-level posts come with a cost attached as well as obtaining a higher degree for significance and growth or completion of a mandatory certification like the CPE.
Salary is one of the major incentives when a physician moves to an executive post but that is not the only reason why one should think of moving ahead in the career. Everything should be considered before changing the career path so that there are no regrets later!