Excerpts from…The Cath Lab Wage Survey: 2013 Salary Report

Introduction 

SpringBoard’s Cath Lab Wage Survey aims to gather comprehensive insight into the salaries & wages, responsibilities and backgrounds of professionals working in the sector. The survey responses for 2013 as in previous years were drawn from cardiac catheterization, interventional radiology and electrophysiology specialists working within the United States in diverse roles including managers, nurses, and technologists. The Cath Lab Wage Survey now provides the most accurate picture of how the industry looks on the ground, from those people working day-to-day in cardiac catheterization laboratories. 

This [excerpted] report presents some of the interesting findings that were obtained from the 2013 survey and also discusses how these findings compare with results obtained from an earlier survey that Springboard conducted in 2011. SpringBoard wishes to thank all the clinical professionals and industry associations that supported the survey. We saw participation grow by over 20% from 2011 to 2013. We believe this year’s survey allows us to create an important benchmark as the Affordable Care Act comes to our industry.

Respondents by region 

The best represented region was the South which accounted for 41.5% of all respondents, followed by the Midwest with 23.4% representation, the West with 20.1%, and the Northeast came last with 15% of the respondents (Figure 1).

An analysis of the geographic market distribution of the respondents shows that 33.39% of the respondents work in a greater metropolitan area, 25.09% work in an urban area, 27.13% work in a suburban area, and the remaining 14.39% work in a rural area.

Geographic factors 

Our research showed that those working in the West region commanded on average the highest wages, followed by those in the Northeast and then the Midwest follows, with the South coming last. Table 1 shows that this was also the case in the 2011 survey.

The same trend was observed with the on-call hourly rates, with the West leading, Northeast following, and then the Midwest, with the South coming last (Table 2).

One can observe that the wages have recorded a positive growth since the last survey in 2011, but there is a slight decline in the average wage for those working in the Northeast. The decline can be attributed to sampling errors since the sample size for the Northeast region in the 2013 survey is almost double the sample size of 2011 survey. It is possible that the small sample size for 2011 could have been less representative of the actual market and may have failed to capture an accurate picture of the market on the ground. Table 3 shows the sample sizes from the two surveys.

We also wanted to find out if the geographic market of a worker has any weight on the wage an employee earns. Therefore, we asked the respondents to provide us with information about the geographic market in which they work. We observed that those who work in a greater metropolitan area earned the highest, followed by urban workers, then suburban workers followed, while rural workers earned the lowest wages. We believe the difference in wages across geographic markets is as a result of employers factoring in the cost of living in each region – rural areas tend to have lower costs of living compared to urban and metropolitan areas. Figure 2 highlights the differences in wages across geographic markets.

Want to learn more? Visit SpringboardStaffing.com to view the entire survey.