WHEN IT COMES TO HOSPITALIST PAY, the news is (relatively) good. Mean compensation for all hospitalists in 2024 was $348,231. That’s a jump of about $18,000, or 2.6%, over that mean figure in our 2023 survey.
As with all physician pay surveys, that average amount represents the tip of the iceberg. There are big swings in hospitalist compensation depending on how you slice and dice the data.
In this article
THIS COVERAGE WILL REVIEW DATA ON HOSPITALIST PAY from both the 2024 and the 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Surveys. Our annual surveys examine how hospitalist compensation is affected by factors such as the type of patients hospitalists treat, the number of shifts they work, the number of patients they see per shift and more. Articles in this series answer the following questions:
• What is an average number for hospitalist compensation?
• How do patient encounters per shift affect pay—and hospitalist satisfaction?
• How much in bonuses do hospitalists earn?
• How does experience affect hospitalist pay?
• How does working extra shifts boost hospitalist pay?
• What part of the country pays hospitalists the most?
• Hospitalist pay by group type: Who is the highest paid?
• Can you expect a raise this year?
What is an average number for hospitalist compensation?
Pay for hospitalists who treat adults and work in nonacademic practices, for example, comes in at $355,307. Those in academic settings, by comparison, earn an average of $303,624. And pediatric hospitalists reported a mean compensation of $249,741.
But while overall hospitalist compensation continued to climb, not everyone who responded to our survey reported a pay raise. Our compensation looked at how—and when—hospitalist groups raise physician pay and the different models they use to set hospitalist pay.
Some groups, for example, evaluate hospitalist pay every other year, and most factor in hours and the type of shifts hospitalists work when making decisions about compensation. Nocturnists tend to earn more, as do hospitalists working at rural hospitals.
Here’s a look at other factors affecting hospitalist pay from our surveys.
How do patient encounters per shift affect pay—and hospitalist satisfaction?
Our 2024 survey data show that while more patient encounters per shift equals more pay—about 9% more for some high-volume hospitalists—that payday may come with a price: significantly lower levels of career satisfaction.
There was other bad news from this survey: Hospitalists seeing an “average” number of patient encounters per shift—between 15 and 17—saw their pay drop a little. Their higher-volume colleagues, by comparison, saw pay raises of nearly $25,000.
See our survey coverage for more data on how patient volumes affect hospitalist pay
How much in bonuses do hospitalists earn?
How are hospitalist groups using incentives linked to such measures as patient satisfaction, readmissions, patient experience and citizenship to reward physician performance? Our 2024 survey found that nearly half of hospitalists—42%—are paid based on a combination of salary and incentives. Our data also found that on average, hospitalists earn about $43,000 of their annual income from bonuses and incentives.
We spoke to leaders of four hospitalist groups who described how they use bonuses to pay hospitalists. Strategies range from rewarding productivity and citizenship to plans that mirror Medicare’s pay-for-performance model. For more on how those groups use incentives to pay hospitalists, see the coverage from our 2024 survey.
When it comes to bonuses and incentives, adult hospitalists get an average of $43,448 a year. But some hospitalists get significantly more—from $80,000-$100,000. see our coverage of Today’s Hospitalist survey data. To see how much of a bonus your colleagues get and who’s bringing in the big bonus bucks, check out our coverage of our survey results.
When it comes to calculating bonuses, our 2023 survey found about half of hospitalists are paid based on a combination of group and individual performance. The most popular measures to calculate bonuses are quality measures like patient satisfaction and documentation, with nearly three-quarters of hospitalists reporting their bonuses are based on those factors. For more information on factors used to calculate hospitalist bonuses, see the report from our 2023 survey.
How does experience affect hospitalist pay?
Our survey data found that while hospitalist compensation is definitely affected by experience, the difference may not be as big as you think. Nonacademic hospitalists who treat adults and have worked between 15 and 19 years, for example, are paid a little over $15,000 a year more than their newbie colleagues who have been in the specialty only four years or less. That’s a difference of only 4%. See more data on hospitalist compensation by years of experience in our survey coverage.
How does working extra shifts boost hospitalist pay?
What part of the country pays hospitalists the most?
When it comes to hospitalist pay by geographic region, hospitalists in the Midwest
reported the highest average income at $383,995. That’s about $38,000—or
10%—higher than average pay for all adult hospitalists. For more on how hospitalist pay varies from region to region, see Today’s Hospitalist survey
coverage.
Hospitalist pay by group type: Who is the highest paid?
When it comes to hospitalist pay by group type, the type of groups that hospitalists work for can make a big difference. While our 2024 survey found that average pay for nonacademic adult hospitalists came in at $355,307, two types of hospitalist groups
paid their physicians considerably more.
To see how much different types of hospitalist groups pay their physicians, read more in our analysis of Today’s Hospitalist survey data.
Can you expect a big raise this year?
In late 2024, we talked to a hospital medicine consultant about the prospects of big compensation increases in 2025. His take? Those chances may not be so great, given the tight profit margins (if not negative ones) that hospitals are now contending with, as well as high labor costs and an avalanche of claims denials from insurers.
But that gives hospitalists opportunities to talk up their value in comp negotiations—in playing a key role in appealing those denials, for one, and in occasionally taking on more shifts or more patients per shift to save hospitals the cost of hiring locums. For more on how hospitalists can position themselves for pay increases, see our 2024 coverage.
Interesting. My former employer “renegotiated” a contract with our group which did include an increase in base compensation. As the only remaining original member of the practice who was pivotal in developing the program and with 15 years of hospitalist experience (following 27 years of traditional Internal Medicine practice) I expected a pay differential consistent with that history. Instead the base was set the same for all group hospitalists with experience ranging from 2 to 15 years. I was not asking for anything close to the $70,000 experience related differential noted in the article. So I retired and took my… Read more »