WHAT PART of the country pays hospitalists the most? According to data from the 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey, it’s the Pacific region, where hospitalists report an average compensation of $360,449. That’s about 9% higher than the mean pay of $339,438 reported by all full-time adult hospitalists in this year’s survey.
One reason for the higher pay in the Pacific region likely has something to do with the type of hospitalist groups in the area. Almost 40% of hospitalists in that region say they work for a local hospitalist group or a multispecialty/primary care group. (By state law, most hospitals and health systems in the state are prevented from employing doctors.) Both those types of groups tend to pay more, which helps push up the mean pay for all hospitalists in the region.
(For more on how different group types pay hospitalists, see our data.)
Where comp is down
The lowest paying region for hospitalists, according to our survey data, is the Northeast, Hospitalists in that region reported a mean compensation of $316,643.
In our survey, more hospitalists in that region report working for a hospital or hospital corporation than in any other. Because hospitals tend to pay slightly below the mean—$336,621 compared to a mean of $339,348 for all adult hospitalists—compensation numbers in the Northeast are going to be on the low end.
When we compare this year’s compensation to data from last year’s survey, there are some big changes.
Hospitalists in the Southwest region, for example, reported a drop in pay of almost 8%. That region has the largest number of hospitalists working for national hospitalist management companies—22%—which may be hurting hospitalist pay. Some of those groups, particularly ones owned by private equity firms, have run into financial problems.
Those problems may be trickling down to affect hospitalist pay. Our data show that in 2023, hospitalists working for these companies reported a compensation drop of 1.4%.
Hospitalists in the Pacific region, by comparison, reported the biggest bump up in pay, with a 7.9% increase. That’s likely due to the type of groups in the region (see above).
See more data on hospitalist compensation at our 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey coverage
National vs local hospitalist management group is a factor that I would suspect for pay discrepancies. However, I lived and worked in the NE, and I traveled to other areas of the nation, esp California and Washington and I saw a tremendous difference in Cost of Living basics (housing, etc). And, I don’t doubt that wages for all sorts of workers are higher in areas where COL is higher. So, can you get back to us with a re-write of your article after you’ve corrected all the regional hospitalist wages for same region COL, using a widely-accepted COL metric.