U.S. HEALTH CARE FACES many shortages, but a lack of intensivists is one that hospitalists are often called on to help solve. But how many hospitalists actually work in ICUs?
A KFF report from 2020 found there were just over 16,000 intensivists in the U.S. health care system at that time. The same report also found that an additional 116,000 “second-line physicians” who don’t have formal critical care training are caring for ICU patients. That group includes hospitalists, pulmonologists and anesthesiologists.
According to data from our 2024 survey, 35.5% of adult hospitalists said they work in their ICU and serve as an attending. Another 15.6% of adult hospitalists reported working in the ICU but not as an attending. And 49% don’t work in the ICU.
Pediatric hospitalists are much less likely to do ICU work: 74.5% said they don’t. There was a similar trend among academic hospitalists, with the same percentage as among pediatric hospitalists saying they don’t provide ICU care.
Here’s a look at our survey data showing how many among different groups of hospitalists work in the ICU.
Hospitalists working in the ICU: employer type
• National hosp. mgmt. co.: 78.0%
• Local hosp. group: 70.6%
• Hospital/hospital corp.: 48.0%
• Multispecialty/PCP group: 45.3%
• University/med. school: 14.3%
Hospitalists working in the ICU: region
• Midwest: 60.3%
• Southwest: 58.7%
• South: 56.9%
• Pacific: 47.7%
• Mountain: 44.1%
• Northeast: 34.7%
Hospitalists working in the ICU: hospital size
• <100 beds: 76.1%
• 100-249 beds: 59.0%
• 250-500 beds: 47.8%
• >500 beds: 21.1%
Hospitalists working in the ICU: shift length
• 8-9 hours: 41.4%
• 10-11 hours: 43.9%
• 12 hours: 55.6%
• >12 hours: 69.7%
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.
