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Denver doctors receive some of the lowest physician salaries in America

"If you're a hospital in Denver, you know that doctors may want to live here and they're willing to take a lower salary. And that might make it easier for you to attract other physicians too."
Credit: Photo: Getty Images

DENVER BUSINESS JOURNAL - Denver physicians are paid at the seventh-lowest level of doctors in any major metropolitan area in the United States, according to a new study from the country’s largest online physician network.

However, the low ranking is not a sign that Denver patients should be worried about the quality of their care. But it's a sign health systems here likely have an easier time retaining quality doctors, said Christoper Whaley, lead author of the report for San Francisco-based Doximity and adjunct assistant professor at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health. A linking factor in most of the metro areas that ranked poorly in the study is that they are desirable places to live, allowing recruiters there to spend less bringing in high-quality talent.

Denver physicians received average pay in 2017 of $313,895 — compensation that was 28.2 percent lower than that received by their counterparts in Charlotte, North Carolina, which had the highest salaries in the survey of more than 65,000 licensed U.S. doctors. Doctors in Durham, North Carolina had the lowest annual pay in the report — $282,035.

Whaley said the lower pay levels in Denver reflect a phenomenon that some economists refer to as the “sunshine tax,” which is the ability of employers in places where many people want to live to offer a lower salary and still receive a high level of applicants because of the desirability of the destination. As such, a doctor looking to move to a new location may be willing to receive to take $85,000 a year less to work in Denver than in Milwaukee, which is the second-highest-paying city for physicians, just because they like the area better.

Read more about this investigation at the Denver Business Journal.

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