Thanks for looking this up. I did some research many years ago when I was in an unpleasant on-call situation (unreliable third-party dependency) and negotiated pay for it as a result. I recall seeing a $3500 daily rate figure at the time for a cardio surgeon, but that may have been an outlier.
While the numbers may be off, one point I didn't make in my initial post but should have is that anybody doing on-call is providing a valuable service. It's no different than paying a babysitter to watch TV while your kids sleep. Both babysitters and devops/IT/whatever are compensated for their ability to act in case the unexpected happens. If someone's not getting paid for that, then it must not be valuable to the company to have that coverage.
Yeah, the article linked there is nicely specific. From the article (and these are median):
Neurological surgeons had the highest median daily rate for providing on-call coverage, about $2,000 a day. Near the top of the pay scale were neurologists ($1,500), cardiovascular surgeons ($1,600), internists ($1,050), and anesthesiologists ($800).
Among the specialists earning lower median daily rates for on-call compensation were: psychiatry ($500), general surgery ($500) gastroenterology ($500), ophthalmology ($300), and family medicine without obstetrics ($300), according to the MGMA survey data.
While the numbers may be off, one point I didn't make in my initial post but should have is that anybody doing on-call is providing a valuable service. It's no different than paying a babysitter to watch TV while your kids sleep. Both babysitters and devops/IT/whatever are compensated for their ability to act in case the unexpected happens. If someone's not getting paid for that, then it must not be valuable to the company to have that coverage.