One of the most difficult tasks as a technical director is asking administration to spend more money on sonographer salaries without justifying the request by showing a potential increase in revenue. Dual registry pay can be a hard sell for that reason. Over the last few decades, interventional cardiologists have been performing peripheral interventions on an increasingly regular basis. Because of this, the number of echo vascular labs has increased dramatically. Due to the unique circumstances of echo vascular labs, the topic of dual registry pay comes up often and is certain to be a hot button topic.
The first step in the process is determination of a fair hourly rate increase for dual registered sonographers. Salary data is difficult to obtain and getting information locally can be even more of a challenge. Fortunately, the Society of Diagnostic Medical Sonography (SDMS) releases a salary survey to its members every two years. I was given access to these results to utilize them during my research for our request for dual pay at our organization. Within the survey there is a calculator tool that will allow you to compare a number of variables. I used this calculator within the current sonographer salary survey to compare the median salary for Registered Diagnostic Cardiac Sonographers (RDCS) to Registered Vascular Technologists (RVT) to sonographers with RDCS and RVT ( Table 1 ). With a quick glance at the table it is clear that one dollar per hour is the magic number for dual registry pay. Keep in mind, this is a national survey and this amount could be adjusted either up or down to account for regional pay variances.
| Registry | Median hourly rate (50 th %) | Percentage of songraphers |
|---|---|---|
| RDCS | 33.00 | 24 |
| RVT | 33.00 | 36 |
| RDCS, RVT | 34.04 | 8 |
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