Radiologists are once again one of the top earning specialties in the annual Medscape Physician Compensation Report. But dig a bit deeper and the picture is not so sunny. The mean salary for radiologists dropped 10 percent from the previous year's report and satisfaction dropped from over 70% to 52%.

The average compensation brought home by top executives of health care systems was slightly higher this year, with increases averaging 3% in 2011 over 2010, reveals a survey conducted by Integrated Health Strategies, a health care management consulting firm with offices in Kansas City, Missouri; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Dallas, Texas.

CEOs continue to earn higher salaries than their CFO counterparts, but the difference in pay between the two groups is smaller in the health care market than in all other major industries, according to an analysis by BDO USA LLP, a Chicago-based accounting and consulting firm..

Smaller salary increases will be the norm for physicians in 2012, according to the 2011 Physician Compensation Survey released Monday by the Hay Group, a Philadelphia-based consulting firm.

Increases in compensation were the norm for most physicians in medical groups from 2010 to 2011, but so, too, were operating losses.

Physician groups, radiology groups among them, are executing minimal changes in salaries paid to management staff, according to an annual survey released by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).

Radiologists are clearly getting the shorter end of the stick on the compensation front. Salaries are on a decline, according to the “Physician Compensation and Production Survey: 2011 Report Based on 2010 Data” survey released by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).

The current trend toward hospital–physician integration has renewed the focus of leaders on both sides on developing fair, sustainable physician-compensation plans. On March 21, 2011, in Chicago, Illinois, at the Congress on Healthcare Leadership of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE), three speakers, Timothy J. Cotter, Ralph