Methodology you can inspect
Signal earns trust by stating what it compares, showing the cohort it used, and withholding a result when the evidence is too thin.
Current model: signal-v1.2
What Signal compares
Signal compares one annual, pre-tax cash-compensation figure with annual cash compensation reported by comparable physicians. It includes base salary, recurring bonus or incentive, and production pay when they are included in a report. The result is a market position—not a recommendation to accept, reject, or negotiate an offer.
Eligible physician reports
A published cohort contains approved attending realized-compensation or accepted-offer reports from the past 4 years. SalaryDr excludes trainee compensation and accepts annual compensation up to $2,000,000 under this model.
Cohort selection and fallback
Signal starts with the requested state, then a defined US region, then the United States. Within each geography, it prefers matching selected experience, practice setting, and workload refinements. If a requested refinement or narrow geography cannot produce a safely publishable cohort, Signal tells you directly what was broadened or omitted.
Publication and privacy thresholds
SalaryDr publishes a comparison only with at least 5 reports. A cohort that applies any requested refinement requires at least 12 reports. Every published comparison shows the exact report count. This threshold protects individual report privacy and avoids presenting a small sample as a stable market signal.
Percentiles and ranges
The middle 50% is the 25th through 75th percentile of the chosen cohort; the median is the 50th percentile. Signal calculates these values directly from the selected reports. It does not synthetically widen the range and does not recency-weight reports within the eligible four-year window.
Comparison Coverage labels
Limited means 5–11 reports or that a selected refinement was omitted. Standard means 12 or more reports with every selected refinement applied. Strong means 30 or more reports, state-level geography, and every selected refinement applied. Coverage describes the published cohort—not prediction accuracy.
Inputs, sharing, and limitations
An entered compensation number is sent only in the comparison request. It is not added to the URL, restored after refresh, included in shared links, or sent to Signal analytics. Signal does not normalize non-cash benefits, call burden, ownership, restrictive covenants, unstandardized one-time payments, productivity terms, or local contract conditions.