News: California nurses earn most, South Dakota nurses earn least, study finds

Nurses working in California earn an average of $106,950 per year, making them the best paid nurses in the United States. Nurses working in South Dakota (the lowest paid state for nurses) can expect to make an average of $53,340 per year, a study from Eligibility.com found.

The best paid CDI professionals in the United States also find their work in California, according to the 2018 CDI Salary Survey, with 24.39% earning between $100,000-$109,000 per year.

For general practitioners (GP), however, the best state for compensation was New Jersey, according to the study, where they made an average of $264,470 per year; the worst state was Rhode Island, where GPs made an average of $175,250 per year.

On average, an RN comes out of nursing school with $30,000 owed in student loans with their national average salary at $75,510 per year. An average GP, on the other hand, enters the workforce with $190,000 in student debt and can expect to make a national average salary of $211,780 per year. This means that the average nurse owes nearly 40% of their salary in student loans, and the average GP owes nearly 90% of their salary in student loans.

When compared to CDI salaries, the average nurse in the United States and the average CDI professional can be expected to earn at least comparable salaries. According to the CDI Salary Survey, 21.17% of respondents (regardless of professional background) earned $70,000-$79,000, and 28.15% of respondents earned salaries of $100,000 or more, putting them above the national average nursing paygrade. All these figures indicate that a CDI professional entering the profession from a nursing background needn’t accept earnings below their previous salary.

Editor’s note: To read the full results from eligibility.com, click here. To read the 2018 CDI Salary Survey results, click here. To read about JustCoding’s coder salary survey, click here.