Hospitalist Salaries

Hospitalists are the craze! I'm starting my internal medicine residency this July and I'm now considering being a hospitalist. Not so much because they make a great salary - they don't! But what I like about the hospitalist set-up is that there are a variety of practice models you can follow: one week on, one week off, or four days on, and then 3 days off, etc. This can translate into a lot of free time! I love my free time. Granted, you work hard when you are on and you can work upwards of 80 hours a week, but the flip side is that you rarely have to take call in those set-ups. Again, so my free time is mine! Hospitalists make decent bank. A few of the hospitalist companies that I contacted (as well as close friends going through the job hunt process) told me that a typical base salary in a private practice group (non-academic) was around $150,000. Now, this may or may not be a lot to you, but considering I have a huge amount of medical school debt, it doesn't sound like a whole lot to me! Now, here's the sweet part of being a hospitalist - the incentive bonuses. These can range from another $10,000 to $60,000+ depending on how hard you want to work. So, the 150k is guaranteed if you see say 15 patients a day. Let's say you see twenty patients and throw in a couple procedures, you are likely to get your bonus. There are some hospitalists with base salary + bonus that are clearing $300,000 a year! And that's for 2 weeks of (hard) work a month! Just something to think about if you are considering medicine as a career.