WHEN IT COMES to hospitalist pay by group type, who hospitalists work for can make a big difference.
In our 2024 survey, average pay for nonacademic adult hospitalists came in at $355,307. But two types of hospitalist groups paid their physicians considerably more than that average.
Hospitalists working at local hospitalist groups, for example, reported an average compensation of $380,431. That’s $25,000 (or 7%) higher than the average hospitalist pay. Hospitalists with multispecialty/primary care groups came in at a close second: $380,088.
Pay Gains
Hospitalists with those two types of groups remained on top of the compensation pack by racking up big year-to-year gains in overall compensation. While hospitalists as a whole saw their average pay increase in 2024 over the previous year by 2.6%, hospitalists at the top-paid groups doubled or nearly doubled that percentage gain.
Pay for hospitalists at local hospitalist groups, for example, jumped more than $25,000, or 7.2%. Compensation for multispecialty/primary care groups rose by nearly $21,000, or 5.6%.
Pay for hospitalists working for hospitals and hospital corporations, by comparison, rose by $12,659, or 3.8%, during that same period. And pay for hospitalists at universities and medical schools shrank by $4,630 or 1.6% during that time frame.
Shifts and patient volume
Why are hospitalists at local hospitalist groups and multispecialty/primary care groups making so much more than their colleagues? A deeper dive into our survey data provides some clues.
Look at shifts per month, for example, and you’ll see that hospitalists working for local hospitalist groups and multispecialty/primary care groups log more hours.
While adult hospitalists reported working an average of 14.8 shifts per month, hospitalists with multispecialty/primary care groups reported 16.2 shifts a month. That’s a difference of nearly 10%, which is slightly higher than the 7% boost in above-average pay these hospitalists receive.
Hospitalists at local hospitalist groups, by comparison, reported working 15.7 shifts a month. That means these hospitalists are seeing shift loads about 6% higher than average.
Another obvious question is whether top-paid hospitalists see more patents during the shifts they work. While our data provide some perspective, those are far from definitive.
Our survey found, for example, that adult hospitalists reported an average of 15.8 patient encounters per shift. Hospitalists working for local hospitalist groups, by comparison, reported the highest number of patient encounters per shift: 17.9. That’s a difference of 2.1 patients every shift, or 13%.
One problem with that explanation for higher pay is hospitalists with national hospitalist management companies reported the same number of patient encounters per shift—17.9—but their pay was $347,386. That’s $33,000 lower than what hospitalists working for local groups report.
Hospitalists working for multispecialty/primary care groups seem to have found the sweet spot in balancing pay and patient loads. Those physicians reported an average of 15.8 patient encounters per shift. The only group with lower patient volumes is hospitalists at universities/medical schools, who reported considerably lower pay than those working with multispecialty/primary care groups.
Here’s a look at average pay by different types of hospitalist employers:
- Hospital/hospital corporation: $349,280
- Local hosp. group: $380,431
- Multispecialty/primary care group: $380,088
- Nat. hosp. mgmt. company: $347,386
- University/medical school: $286,143
-
For data on how physician compensation is affected by bonuses, experience, shift work and location, check out our overview on hospitalist pay.
