Defense Health Care: DOD Chiropractor Wage Rates

Abstract : In response to congressional direction in House Report 112-479, the enclosed briefing provides information on the wage rates of the Department of Defense s (DOD) federal civilian chiropractors compared with the wages of other federal civilian health care professionals within DOD with similar training and education. We provided this briefing to the staff from the Senate and House Committees on Armed Services on February 4, 2013 and January 29, 2013, respectively. We found that DOD employs 90 chiropractors at 62 military treatment facilities as of January 2013. Further, the mean salary of DOD s federal civilian chiropractors is similar to the mean salary of those serving in comparable DOD federal civilian health care occupations. Specifically, we found that the mean salaries of our selected health care professions ranged from approximately $77,000 to approximately $94,000 with the mean salary for chiropractors approximately 7 percent higher than the lowest mean salary and approximately 12 percent lower than the highest mean salary. Although these health care positions have similar education and training requirements, they have some different responsibilities.