Doctors« Salaries - An Unsolved Riddle 0 10

The portal "Puaro.lv" published a list of the top 300 highest salaries in Latvian medicine. This list includes ten doctors - radiologists, surgeons, orthodontists, and dentists, whose monthly income before taxes ranges from 20,000 to 30,000 euros, with the top earner being a radiologist who earned 490,419 euros in 2024 (7,160 euros in public medical institutions and 483,259 euros in the private sector), which averages nearly 41,000 euros per month.

In second place is a plastic surgeon whose income totaled 304,945 euros, including 154,330 euros earned in the private sector and 150,615 euros in a municipal medical institution. There are also quite a few medical professionals who earn around 10,000 euros per month.

The list is compiled based on data from the State Revenue Service and is anonymized: the names and specific workplaces of the doctors are not mentioned - only their professions and total annual income are provided.

A radiologist at the Riga East Clinical University Hospital and the chief specialist of the Ministry of Health in radiology, Atis Svare, believes that the materials published by "Puaro.lv" without additional explanations are "not a very nice provocation."

"If we are talking about a radiologist who can earn half a million a year, then most likely this is a doctor who works not only in Latvia but also abroad, and pays taxes here. It is known that radiologists are among the top ten highest-paid specialties in the world," noted Svare.

It should also be taken into account that there is a shortage of radiologists, and they can switch to the private sector at any moment. Moreover, specialists have different productivity levels. "Unfortunately, I am not able to earn twenty to thirty thousand, even though I work a lot," said Svare. Other radiologists, who wished to remain anonymous, confirmed that in Latvia, a radiologist earns about 9,000 to 10,000 euros per month.