Message from the President and CEO

On behalf of the staff at the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA), I am pleased to introduce NCCPA’s first report of Income from Physician Assistant Positions by Principal Clinical Position; a Supplement to 2013 Statistical Profile of Certified Physician Assistants that debuted in August 2014.

The NCCPA PA Professional Profile, the dynamic database from which much of the information in this report is drawn, was launched May 2012. The PA Professional Profile has value thanks to the tens of thousands of PAs who have taken time from their busy schedules to answer its questions. Just 18 months after its launch, 80 percent of all certified PAs had contributed data to it, making it by far the most robust source of PA data in existence.

The data reflected in this report includes responses from PAs who were certified as of December 31, 2013 and completed the income and principal clinical position items. The report includes salary data on the specialty practice identified in the 2013 Statistical Profile of Certified Physician Assistants and does not include region, age, years of practice, etc. Future reports may be more specific in this regard. There are 48,147 PAs out of 95,583 certified PAs as of December 31, 2013, included in this report (response rate of 50.4%). To ensure anonymity, only specialties with an adequate sample are included. Income is defined as total income before taxes from January – December of the last calendar year from all PA positions combined. In the PA Professional Profile, PAs are provided with a multiple choice item that lists income in intervals of $10,000. PAs also have the option to choose “Not working as a PA last calendar year” (n = 4,457) and “prefer not to answer” (n =5,384). To derive the mean and median, the middle value of each interval was coded as the income.

The NCCPA staff and I hope all those concerned with the PA profession and with health care workforce issues find this report to be an invaluable source of insight and information. A special thanks is extended to all PAs who provided the requested data and to the talented research team at NCCPA who worked diligently in the preparation of this report.

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About the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA)

The National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA) is the only certifying organization for the over 168,000 PAs in the United States. The PA-C credential is awarded by NCCPA to PAs who fulfill certification, certification maintenance and recertification requirements. NCCPA also administers the Certificate of Added Qualifications (CAQ) program for experienced, Board Certified PAs practicing in ten (11 in 2025) specialties. For more information, visit https://www.nccpa.net.