WHEN IT COMES to hospitalist pay by geographic region, who is making the most money—and why?
According to data from last year’s Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey, 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 hospitalists who treat adults.
At the other end of the spectrum were hospitalists in the Northeast, who reported a mean pay of $321,903. That’s just over $26,000—or 7.5%—lower than the mean compensation for all adult hospitalists.
Those data mean that hospitalists in the Northeast are making $62,000 less than their Midwestern colleagues. That’s a difference of 19%.
Our survey data also offer some clues to explain those differences in pay by region. Let’s take a look.
The Midwest: employer diversity
One likely reason that hospitalists in the Midwest reported the highest pay has to do with the diversity of hospitalist employers in that region.
Just over half (52%) of hospitalists in the Midwest, for example, work for hospitals or hospital corporations, which is on the low side in our survey. In most parts of the country, more than 60% of hospitalists reported having that type of employer.
Instead, the Midwest has the largest number of hospitalists working for local hospitalist groups: 15%. That’s significant because nationally, local hospitalist groups reported the highest mean pay in the field at $380,431.
The Midwest also reported the second highest number of hospitalists working for multispecialty and primary care groups (10.5%), another practice model that tends to pay well. Nationally, hospitalists in these groups reported an average compensation of $380,088 a year.
For more on average pay by different group type, see Today’s Hospitalist coverage.
The Northeast: academic medicine
The conventional wisdom says that all physicians in the Northeast, not just hospitalists, see lower pay for several reasons, but a big one is the presence of so many universities and medical schools. Today’s Hospitalist surveys have consistently found that the Northeast pays the lowest compensation in the specialty, and this year’s numbers are no different.
Our most recent data found that 31% of hospitalists from the Northeast identified themselves as academic hospitalists. That’s one of the highest regional percentages of hospitalists who identify as academic physicians in our survey.
The Northeast also has a low number of hospitalists working for higher-paying local hospitalist groups: 2.3%. And the region has a relatively small number of hospitalists in multispecialty and primary care groups—4.6%—that also pay higher comp.
Mean hospitalist pay by region
Northeast $321,903
South $352,114
Midwest $383,995
Mountain $343,319
Southwest $335,093
Pacific $327,410
VIEW 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.
