What Is the STS Surgeon Compensation Survey?

Updated

The STS Surgeon Compensation Survey is a data-collection effort by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) that asks U.S.-based cardiothoracic surgeons to report their compensation so the specialty can understand its market value. According to STS, the survey is designed to help U.S.-based CT surgeons understand their value in the market specific to specialty, practice, career stage, and geography. It is aimed at surgeons practicing in the United States, and participation is framed as a member activity — the current cycle is promoted to STS members and surgeon members through the Society's updates.

What the survey is for

The stated purpose is market understanding rather than individual negotiation advice. STS describes the survey as a way for U.S.-based CT surgeons to see how compensation relates to four variables:

  • Specialty — the type of cardiothoracic work performed
  • Practice — the practice setting or model
  • Career stage — where a surgeon sits in their career, from early career onward
  • Geography — the region where the surgeon practices

That structure matters because it means results are meant to be read in slices, not as a single national number. A surgeon comparing an offer or an internal pay decision gets more use from the specialty-plus-career-stage-plus-region view than from an average across all CT surgeons.

Who is asked to participate

The survey is directed at U.S.-based cardiothoracic surgeons. STS promotes it through its member communications, including the presidential update from Vinay Badhwar, MD, which encourages participation in the 2026 STS Compensation Survey. The Society also maintains an early career resources area, which is relevant because career stage is one of the survey's breakdowns and early career surgeons are a group for whom compensation benchmarking tends to matter most.

Participation is presented as a contribution to the field: the more surgeons who respond, the more usable the specialty-, practice-, career-stage-, and geography-level results become.

How to take part

STS does not publish a standalone public sign-up page in the material available here; the survey is surfaced through the Society's member updates and the "STS Surgeon Compensation Survey" item on its site. The practical path is:

  1. Check STS member communications. The survey is announced in the presidential update and related Society updates, which is where the current cycle and its timing appear.
  2. Use the survey entry point on sts.org. The "STS Surgeon Compensation Survey" listing on the site is the direct route to the survey itself.
  3. Complete the survey as a U.S.-based CT surgeon. The call is explicitly for U.S.-based CT surgeons; the questions are organized around specialty, practice, career stage, and geography.
  4. Watch for the results. The stated output is a compensation reference for the specialty, which is what makes the reporting worth the time.

If you are not a member or not practicing in the U.S., the material here does not describe an alternative route, so the member update channel is the reliable way to confirm eligibility and timing for a given cycle.

What it is not

The survey is not a salary calculator, a contract-review service, or a job board. It collects compensation data and reports it by segment; it does not, based on the available material, produce an individualized recommendation for what a specific surgeon should be paid. For a surgeon weighing an offer, the survey is best treated as one input alongside the STS risk calculators and other clinical and professional resources the Society provides.

Why it exists alongside the rest of STS

STS runs the survey within a broader set of data and quality programs, including the STS National Database, public reporting of institutional performance, and data access programs for quality improvement and research. The compensation survey follows the same logic in a different domain: gather structured data from the specialty, then return benchmarks that members can act on. For early career surgeons in particular, that benchmark is the difference between negotiating from a general impression of the market and negotiating from numbers broken down by specialty, practice, career stage, and geography.