In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001, congress directed the Secretary of Defense conduct a review of the adequacy of medical officer pay. A request for a study was given to the Center of Naval Analysis (CNA) by the DoD Tricare Management Agency (TMA).
Between 2001 and 2003, CNA released a 3 part report that compared compensation between uniformed and private-sector health care professionals. The report was entitled "Health Professions' Retention-Accession Incentives Study Report to Congress". It is important to note that these reports appeared to be authored before 2003 prior to the onset of the war in Iraq. Links to the original reports located on the CNA website are provided below.
The documents contain interesting information about the military medical education pipeline, history of the military health care benefit, transition to Tricare and medical health system force structure.
The Phase I report found "a current uniformed/private-sector physician compensation gap exists and that the gap varies widely by medical specialty. Moreover, for the majority of these specialties, the pay gap has widened in the last decade. We also know that the pay gap narrows over the length of a uniformed physician's career and, in some cases is eliminated when we look at completing a 20-year career through the present-value (PV) comparison."
The Phase II/III report found "no significant relationship between the military-civilian pay gap and career length for primary care specialties or for dermatology, neurology, emergency medicine, or physical medicine. We find a modest effect of pay on career length for surgeons, anesthesiologists, radiologists, pathologists, and psychiatrists, and a relatively large effect for the internal medicine subspecialists: gastroenterologists, cardiologists, and hematologists/oncologists. We find that the current uniformed medical corps special pays are inadequate, for some specialties, to confidently meet readiness and peacetime manning requirements."
Phase I: Compensation Comparison of Selected Uniformed and Private-Sector Health Care Professionals
Comparison of Army/Air Force and Private-Sector Physcians' Total Compenstion, by Medical Specialty (Supplement to Health Professions' Retention-Accession Incentives Study)
Phase II & III: Adequacy of Special Pays and Bonuses for Medical Officers and Selected Other Health Care Professionals