Clinical care providers’ total compensation rose a median 4.3% across 2025, a slight pullback from the two years prior but overall a continuation of the “steady climb” fueled by heightened demand for care and talent, hundreds of medical groups and health systems reported in a recent annual survey.
AMGA Consulting, part of the trade association representing multispecialty medical groups and integrated care systems, conducted the survey, which also found a median 4.1% rise in compensation among advanced practice clinicians, plus a narrowing same-setting compensation gap between nurse practitioners and physician assistants.
Work relative value units (wRVUs), a measure of providers’ productivity, also rose by a median of 2.4% across the board and by 3% among the advanced practice clinicians. Overall visits also rose by a median 2%.
These numbers together show signs of “genuine demand expansion,” and for AMGA outline how employers have, at least to some extent, been able to finance their rising compensation expenses “even as reimbursement rates failed to keep pace."
“Over the past several years, provider compensation has increased, but approximately half of the increases have been supported by ongoing growth in wRVU production,” Fred Horton, AMGA Consulting president, said in a statement. “In a marketplace with stagnant reimbursement, this is necessary to afford the increases in total cash compensation, but it is not sustainable. At some, point productivity will top out, and providers are already adjusting their FTE and seeking alternative work arrangements in response to increased workloads.”
The 4.3% overall annual change in total compensation was carried by an equivalent 4.3% increase among providers in medical specialties and a 5.7% rise among those in radiology, anesthesiology or pathology, according to the survey numbers. Growth was slower among primary care clinicians (3.7%) and surgical specialties (3.2%).
The specialty trend was roughly similar for wRVUs, with radiology, anesthesiology and pathology coming in at a median 3.1% increase, surgical specialties at an equivalent 2.4%, and primary care and medical specialties both at 2%.
Among volumes, the survey spotlighted a 2.2% median decline in primary care visits, which translates to about 60 to 90 fewer visits per physician per year. Paired with primary care’s productivity increase, that suggests “that primary care physicians are seeing higher-acuity patients, a shift likely driven by both E/M coding changes and constrained access to specialists,” and should prompt organizations to reconsider how they’re using advanced practice physicians in this space, according to AMGA Consulting.
The annual survey collected data on more than 190 specialties across 451 medical groups and health systems, which together employ nearly 188,000 providers.
Its authors noted that the revealed compensation trends are accompanying a storm of headwinds facing provider organizations, such as impending federal funding cuts and projected physician shortages.
“Organizations must focus on eliminating administrative waste and building an operational platform that supports providers at higher productivity levels without compounding burnout,” Horton said.