IN THE MOST RECENT Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey, we asked advanced practice providers (APPs) to tell us about themselves. It was the first time that we collected information from this fast-growing segment of the hospitalist workforce.
The resulting survey data paint an interesting picture of hospitalist APPs. Most (92%) work full time, for instance, while 76% are female and their average age is 50.
Responding APPs have worked as hospitalists for an average of 8.4 years, and they’ve been in their current jobs for 6.5 years on average. And many of the APPs in our survey come from three regions of the country: the Northeast (31.5%), the Midwest (29.6%) and the South (20.4%).
Here’s a look at other data from our survey about the practices where APPs work, their schedules and patient volumes, and their compensation and satisfaction working in the specialty.
Practice demographics
The APPs in our survey tend to work at larger hospitals and in larger groups. On average, the hospitals where APPs work have 244 beds, and their groups have about 18 FTE physicians and 11 FTE nonphysicians.
The biggest employer of hospitalist APPs is hospitals/hospital corporations (47%). The next biggest employer is local hospitalist groups where 23% of our APP respondents reported working.
Workload
About half (47%) of hospitalist APPs work seven-on/seven-off. A fairly big number (39%) work other daytime shifts, while 14.5% work only nights. Mean shift length for hospitalist APPs is 12.1 hours, with 60% of respondents saying they work 12-hour shifts. Our respondents said that on average, they work just over 14 shifts per month.
About 40% said the number of hours they work has gone up over the last year, although 58% reported that their work hours have remained the same. In terms of patient volume, APPs told us that they see an average of 13 patient encounters per shift. When asked what they thought a reasonable patient volume was, that average was 12 encounters per shift.
Compensation
Average pay for hospitalist APPs, according to our survey, comes in at just over $150,000.
But when it comes to pay, experience definitely counts. Hospitalist APPs working for four years or less make an average of $130,000. Those with 10 or more years of experience, by comparison, make an average of just under $200,000.
As for how they’re paid: Most APPs in our survey (76%) said they are paid straight salary. The 24% of APPs who earn a combination of salary and bonus, however, make significantly more: a mean of $208,000.
In terms of incentives, 51% of hospitalist APPs said they receive group-based bonuses, while 24% get a combination of group-based and individual-based bonuses. Another 19% get individual-based bonuses.
Satisfaction
When asked about their satisfaction working as a hospitalist, the overwhelming majority of APPs said they were satisfied. Just under one-third (31%) said they were very satisfied, and more than half (57%) were satisfied or somewhat satisfied.
Compensation for all subspecialties of hospitalists saw sizeable gains over the past several years, but drilling down there are some nuances. Survey: compensation gains over the last three years.
By comparison, only small numbers of hospitalist APPs said they were somewhat unsatisfied (11%) or very unsatisfied (2%).
Published in the January/February 2023 issue of Today’s Hospitalist
For updated survey data, see results from Today’s Hospitalist’s 2023 Compensation and Career Survey.
Do the reported salaries include medical/dental benefits, CME and the bonus or are they base salaries?
The annual compensation does include bonus pay, but does not include benefits. It’s basically the annual compensation that you would see reported on your annual W2 statement. Medical, dental and CME would not be included.