Physician Compensation Keeps Rising. How Does Your Salary Measure Up?

The 2025 MGMA Physician Compensation and Productivity Data has been released, and here is what you need to know about the key benchmarks and emerging trends from the survey, with 2024 data from more than 220,000 physicians and APPs nationwide.

1. Good News, Physician Compensation Continues to Rise!

Compensation continues to rise steadily for surgical specialists, primary care physicians, and nonsurgical specialists. Overall, most physician specialties saw increases in pay in 2024.

Physicians with supervisory duties report 6% to 13% more in compensation compared to their counterparts without supervisory duties:

PCPS: 6.17% more
Surgical specialists: 13.60% more
Nonsurgical specialists: 12.41% more

If you’re a medical director, supervising or teaching residents or APPs serving in an administrative leadership role in addition to your clinical duties, you should be compensated for this work. We have great data benchmarks, by specialty, to support this additional pay. Remember that productivity has a significant impact on your compensation, and time spent away from clinical duties can affect your work relative value units (wRVUs), encounters, and collections. Consider the impact of supervisory, leadership, and volunteer time on your wRVUs and your cFTE, and ask yourself whether your clinical FTE or wRVU threshold should be adjusted accordingly. If so, it may be time for an amendment to your employment agreement. Bottom line: Your time is valuable, and your pay should reflect your clinical, leadership, and administrative contributions and duties.

2. Bad News, Physician Compensation Falls Behind 5-Year Inflation.

While the 2025 MGMA DataDive Report shows annual compensation increases of 3.17% to 5.57%, roughly matching inflation, the 5-Year gains in median physician total compensation have not kept pace with the 21.2% 5-Year change in CPI.

This is why it’s important to review and renegotiate your compensation every two to three years to make sure your pay keeps pace with inflation.

3. Hybrid compensation plans are increasingly becoming the new normal.

Employers are increasingly leaning towards a mix of Base Salary, Productivity, and Quality incentives. The prevalence of physician compensation plans based solely on salary, productivity, and equal share of the two, continues to decline as quality metrics and other incentives become increasingly essential components of the compensation mix.

4. More Signing and Starting Bonuses Offered to Physicians.

To fill Physician vacancies more quickly, organizations are increasingly offering signing and starting bonuses. For Surgical Specialists, the median signing bonus is $30,000, and the median starting bonus is $38,750.

If you’re negotiating a new contract, be sure to ask for a signing and starting bonus!

5. Hospital-Based Surgical Specialists Are Now More Productive.

A fascinating new trend is emerging around physician productivity and patient encounters. After years of Private Practices consistently outperforming on Median wRVU productivity, Surgical specialists in hospital- or system-owned practices are now generating more wRVUs than those in physician-owned practices.

6. Patient Encounters Rise While wRVUs Fall or Remain Flat?!

For surgical specialists in:

Private practice, total patient encounters increased by more than 105% yet resulted in a 15.44% decrease in median wRVUs in 2024,
Hospital and system-owned practices’ total patient encounters increased by 19.73%, while the median wRVUs only rose by 1.69%.

This trend indicates:

A shift toward shorter, lower wRVU procedures being performed
Possible undercoding, coding mistakes, or documentation issues
Prior authorization delays and denials
APPs are earning more credit for encounters and procedures previously captured by physicians.

The rising productivity of APPs in all settings is particularly noteworthy, with a 39.33% increase in encounters and a 21.86% increase in median wRVUs in private practices.

If it feels as though you’re working harder and seeing more patients, but it’s not translating to wRVUs, you may be correct! If your wRVUs are stagnant or decreasing, consider digging deeper and requesting data on your patient encounters, wRVUs, and collections for the past three years – check the trend to see what may be changing. Many factors that are outside your control impact your productivity. In uncertain times, ensuring a guaranteed base salary component to your compensation can be crucial to transparent and consistent pay.

7. It’s a Great Time for Physicians Looking for a New Job!

The compensation trend for physicians seeking new employment opportunities over the past year has been highly favorable. From 2023 to 2024, the guaranteed compensation of newly hired physicians increased.

19.51% for PCPs
14.86% for surgical specialists
19.18% for nonsurgical specialists

If you are negotiating a new contract or an existing one, you have tremendous negotiating leverage.

8. Physicians Post-Residency and Fellowship Offered Higher Pay.

MGMA DataDive Provider Compensation benchmarks for physicians who entered the workforce in 2023 directly from residency or fellowship show similar, albeit larger, trends in one-year and five-year earnings increases. For surgical specialists, the 2025 MGMA Data indicates an 11.84% increase from 2023 to 2024 and a 30.77% increase over the 5-year period from 2020 to 2024. This suggests that recruiting the top emergent healthcare providers requires more financial incentives, not just the standard yearly cost-of-living pay increase.

With employers paying more to recruit new physicians to fill vacancies and expand to meet the increasing demand for patient care, physicians at any stage of their careers—early, mid, or late—should evaluate and renegotiate their compensation every two to three years to ensure that newer physicians are not being paid at a higher rate than they are.

9. Location Matters When It Comes to Compensation

Compensation increases continue to vary by region and specialty. Evaluate your region’s data to get an accurate picture of what is competitive in your regional market. For instance, in 2024, the biggest regional pay discrepancy in median total compensation ($43,613) was between surgical specialists in the Eastern and Southern regions. This is vital information to know when you’re evaluating and negotiating your pay.

10. Physicians Have Leverage to Negotiate Compensation and Employment Terms

The year-over-year increases in Physician Compensation across all specialties are a direct result of the demand for Physicians and the shortage of available Physicians. The bottom line is that we face a current and growing supply-and-demand issue. In 2024, AAMC reported a projected shortage of physicians ranging from 13,500 to 86,000 by 2036. By the end of 2022, 23.2% of active physicians were 65 or older, and nearly half (48.2%) of practicing physicians were over 55 in 2022. Furthermore, 25.6% of surgeons were older than 65 years in 2022.

This is important information and data to consider as you navigate your career and the business of medicine.

Customized Compensation Consulting for Physicians
At SCC, we are Physician Advocates! We specialize in this important work, helping physicians navigate compensation opportunities and verify fair pay. We would be delighted to work with you to provide data-driven guidance as you navigate your professional journey.
Contact us for one-on-one coaching support around physician compensation and negotiation. We can review your current compensation, provide an analysis using MGMA Physician Compensation Data and benchmarks, offer recommendations for negotiation, and create a customized consultation plan tailored to your goals.