Physician and advanced practitioner salaries are growing, reflecting a workforce in strong demand and limited supply, a new AMN Healthcare report has found.
The annual 2023 AMN Healthcare report by the healthcare talent solutions company reviewed physician and advanced practitioner recruiting incentives based on more than 2,670 search engagements the company conducted from April 1, 2022, to March 31, 2023.
Average starting salaries were up 19% for psychiatrists, 16% for dermatologists, 13% for anesthesiologists and 12% for orthopedic surgeons. Other types of doctors are also seeing increases.
Orthopedic surgeons were found to be offered the highest average starting salary at $633,000, followed by urologists at $540,000, interventional cardiologists at $517,000 and gastroenterologists at $506,000. Pediatricians were offered the lowest average starting salary among roles tracked in the report at $233,000.
When compared to 2021-22, all but two physician specialties tracked in the report saw year-over-year average starting salary increases.
“Rising physician starting salaries are a clear sign that demand for physicians is surging,” Leah Grant, president of AMN Healthcare Physician Solutions, said in an announcement. “Virtually every hospital in the United States, and many other entities, are seeking physicians.”
Retail clinics, urgent care centers, telehealth companies, payers and private equity firms are all looking to recruit doctors, per Grant. “Healthcare is evolving as new market entrants seek to change how and where care is delivered,” she said in her statement. “More types of organizations are recruiting physicians, causing salaries to trend up.”
For the third consecutive year, AMN Healthcare conducted more search engagements for nurse practitioners than any other type of advanced practice professional or physician. NPs were offered $151,000 on average, a 9% increase year over year.
Demand for specialists like oncologists, pulmonologists and neurologists is also on the rise. More than half of the company’s search engagements (64%) were for specialists. Demand for primary care docs, meanwhile, has cooled from its peak in previous years. Nonetheless, family physicians were still the second most-requested search engagement this year, behind nurse practitioners.
A largely aging population with complex needs calls for more specialists to care for things like musculoskeletal conditions and neurological problems. At the same time, a growing number of advanced practitioners are providing primary care, lowering demand for primary care docs, the report said.