Paying Surveys for Doctors

Medicine   //   150

Medical surveys are an easy way to make a few bucks at a good hourly rate (well, maybe at least for a resident), and there are multiple sites offering surveys to physicians. The caveat is that, of course, most survey sponsors are typically looking for board-certified physicians with multiple years of experience, particularly in sub-specialties. The less experience you have, the more you need to be prepared to get screened out of what seem like promising survey opportunities.

Last updated May 2023. This page contains referral/affiliate links (thank you for your support).

Curizon has been in the business a long time, but they just completely revamped their website and platform. It’s a trusted site for well-paying healthcare surveys for physicians as well as other healthcare professionals. Five new sign-ups per month will win $100.

All Global Circle has the most generous sign-up bonus around. You can earn up to $50 just for signing up and validating your physician profile.

ZoomRx is also excellent and has a nice app and better/shorter-than-average surveys. No sign-up bonus for you, but there is a referral one for me if you’d like to support the site!

One of my very favorites is InCrowd, which has a slick mobile-friendly site and will send you survey opportunities by email or text message. These are always of the very short and painless variety (the fastest of all in my experience), so the payouts are small, but it’s good money for the time and basically effortless. You do have to respond quickly before surveys fill up, but you even get a buck when you get screened out. Being referred (like signing up through that link) will earn you a $10 bonus after you answer your first two microsurveys.

M3 Global Research is one of the biggest survey companies, and they’re super active. They’re currently offering $10 for signing up through the end of June (with additional $20 bonuses for attempting six surveys or referring a friend from a target specialty).

One of the biggest sites is Sermo, which is a physician-only “online community.” Once you maintain a balance of $100 in honoraria, you get preferentially invited to more surveys. It can be hard to get your honoraria balance up to the bonus level, especially if you aren’t in a high-demand field like oncology or cardiology. A lot of the well-paying surveys are very arduous, and community components are terrible as you’d expect. They stopped paying welcome bonuses several years ago.

At the resident level, one of my old favorites has been Brand Institute, which almost exclusively sends out short surveys about potential drug brand names. Payouts are always on the smaller side ($15), but each one is quick (about $1 per minute or more) and screen-outs are rare. So if you get invited to a survey, then you can generally complete it and get the honoraria. No BS. The main style/format is nearly always the same, so you pick up speed as you do more of them. And that honoraria size is also significantly larger than what one can generally pull as a non-physician (e.g. SurveySavvy, the biggest most popular survey site around, usually pays a measly $2 per survey). The website, however, is clunky and terrible. You’ve been warned.

Additional legitimate additional survey sites, many of which are significantly less active, are below:

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150 Comments

  5. Pingback: QuantiaMD, now paying for new members | ben white

  14. I’d like to join if possible! I am a medical student though, but we can accumulate points for now until we are board certified?
    Thanks!

    Reply

  17. Julia,

    You won’t be able to join Sermo without finishing school, but you can certainly join QuantiaMD and accumulate points gradually by completing the activities. Then, once you finish up medical school, you’ll be able to confirm your “clinician status” and redeem your points (which is what I did). Basically as long as you log in once a year, the Q-points don’t expire. I actually can’t remember offhand anymore the vetting process for MDLinx or Brand institute, which are the other two I’ve had success with.

    Reply

  26. Is it just me or does Sermo suck these days? I swear I haven’t gotten a survey from them in several months.

    Reply

  27. Sermo is a bit irregular, with frequency depending a lot what specialty you’ve provided. Having $100 in honoraria saved up to reach “preferred status” also makes a signficant difference. Getting the first $100 can be a challenge.

    Reply

  33. Do you have to disclose this survey taking as a relevant financial relationship in a presentation you give?

    Reply

  34. Nope. The actual companies sponsoring these surveys are not dislosed to you as a survey taker, so you don’t even have a way of knowing to whom you could have any sort of relationship.

    Reply

  41. For anyone who is reading this and wondering, yes, I do respond to the these requests (usually the same day!).

    Reply

  42. Sermo has worked very poorly for me to the point that I do not trust them to be secure. I registered and they could not verify who I am. I sent documentation and they emailed me that I was verified and the account active. Then later they emailed and said they can not verify who I am. I responded that you already did. They responded that they did not have any record of an account with my email and asked me for more documentation. Don’t trust a site that can’t even keep track of what info it collects – that’s how identity theft happens; last thing any physician needs is someone getting his/her licensing info and doing illegal things.

    Reply

  43. Sounds super frustrating. Can’t say I’ve heard of anything like that happening to anyone else I know or myself, but I’d definitely be annoyed under those circumstances.

    Typically I’ve seen people provide their medical school diploma or state medical license when it comes to providing documentation for these sites. License numbers are readily available online, and NPI numbers are also public info. So with regards to that sort of information, I don’t really see the harm regardless.

    Reply

  44. I have never gotten anything from Brand Institute. Do you need to be a VIP member to actually get any surveys?

    Reply

  45. Definitely don’t need to be a VIP. The VIP program gives you access to open surveys, but the vast majority of surveys still come from direct invitations.

    I have noticed that the survey invitations seem to come in spurts of activity, and that there is a lot of variability in how soon they come after signing up. For example, I didn’t get a single invitation for the initial three months after signing up and have since continued to get them regularly, so it may just be a matter of time until they kick in. I do know others who received surveys immediately, but it seems like waiting a bit first is probably more common.

    Reply

  46. Hey Ben, I was hoping you had a few more referrals for Sermo to send out? If you do, I would appreciate one! And thanks for all the links!

    Reply

  47. Ben, thanks for the informative post. As many above, I would very much appreciate a Sermo referral, if possible!

    Reply

  60. Brand Institute and QuantiaMD definitely both cater to pharmacists as well as other clinicians. Sermo does not; a few of the others (e.g. Curizon) do as well, but they don’t seem to me to be quite as active. MDLinx does (perhaps ironically), and is one of the most active for physicians, but I’m not sure how good the site is for pharmacists=—my guess is that it would be one of the best bests though.

    Reply
  67. Pingback: Medical Surveys | medicalsurveys

  70. Hello,

    Do you know if PAs can join? If you feel comfortable, please send me a referral as well.
    Thanks!

    Reply

    • Sermo is only for physicians (and they do verify), but most of the others are open to all types of providers.

      Reply

  81. I’d take a referral to Sermo and any others that you have as well. Thanks for all of the great info.

    Reply

  82. I would appreciate a referral to Sermo. thank you for your website and showing us all these different opportunities!

    Reply

  85. Sorry for disturbing i found this site and i was really interested in it can a referall for the sermo site if it is possible ?

    Reply

  86. Ben thanks for posting this resource and keeping it alive all these years, would you kindly send over a sermo referral please? Much appreciated.

    Reply

  92. “High yield” article ;-) -thanks.

    Could you send me a referral for Sermo & Medefield (I’d be open to other referrals, as well.) Thanks again!

    Reply

  94. Just found out I matched yesterday–would love an invite to Sermo as well.

    Also, thanks for the informative list of books needed as a psych resident.

    Have a good day!

    Reply

  97. Hey Ben! Would love a referral also!

    Thanks for the info and the great site btw, been reading off and on for years =)

    Reply

  99. Hi Ben,
    What do these survey companies do if they find that you are not representing yourself accurately (i.e. not actually a practicing cardiologist or whoever)?

    Reply

    • Not pay you for starters. They could conceivably report you to your local medical board, but I haven’t heard of any cases of that happening on the grapevine.

      Reply

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