HOW MUCH PAID time off do hospitalists get a year?
According to our most recent survey results, adult hospitalists receive an average of 6.1 paid days off a year. But that average includes the whopping two-thirds of hospitalists who said they receive no paid time off at all, a percentage that we’ve seen in previous surveys.
Another way to look at data on PTO is how many days off hospitalists who do have PTO receive a year. Among hospitalists who reported getting any paid days off, the average was considerably higher: 18 days a year.
Here are some other findings from our survey about paid time off for hospitalists.
Academic hospitalists get more time off …
Among all hospitalists who treat adults—a group that included physicians with no time off—average PTO came to 8.8 days per year for academic hospitalists and 4.7 for nonacademic.
Among academic physicians who do get paid time off, the average number was 21.4 days per year. Nonacademic hospitalists who reported getting some paid time off received an average of 15.1 days a year.
… as do pediatric hospitalists
Among all pediatric hospitalists, the mean number of paid days off was 12.6, almost twice what adult hospitalists reported. Among pediatric hospitalists who said they receive PTO, the average was 25.2 days a year.
Paid time off by group type
Physicians working for national hospitalist management companies are the least likely to get paid time off, with 88% reporting that they have no PTO.
Local hospitalist groups came in at a close second: 77% of physicians with those groups reported having no paid time off.
Hospitalists working for universities and medical schools were most likely to receive paid time off, with 60% reporting PTO. Those hospitalists received an average of 21.6 days off per year.
And while physicians working for national hospitalist management groups were the least likely to get paid time off, those who did received an average of 22.4 days per year. That’s more days off than hospitalists working for any other type of group.
Days off by geographic region
Hospitalists in the Midwest were the least likely to receive time off. More than three-quarters (77%) said they received no PTO. Among those who did receive time off, the average was only 2.4 days a year.
The Pacific region had the largest percentage of hospitalists with paid time off, with nearly half (47.7%) reporting that they received PTO.
PTO and patient volume
Our data seem to show that the more patients hospitalists see per shift, the less paid time off those physicians receive.
Hospitalists seeing 15 to 17 patients per shift, for example, who receive any PTO reported that they get an average of 17.4 days off per year. For hospitalists with 18 to 20 patients per shift, that number drops to 15.4 days. And for hospitalists reporting more than 20 patients per shift, the number drops again to 12.4 days of PTO.
Paid time off for adult hospitalists: an overview
• Don’t receive PTO: 66.1%
• Receive PTO: 33.9%
• Get up to one week: 9.3%
• Get two weeks: 8.3%
• Get three weeks: 6.7%
• Get >four weeks: 9.6%
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.
