HOW BIG IS the average size of a hospitalist group? Data from the 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey found that for hospitalists who treat adults, average groups have 25.7 physicians and 6.7 nonphysician clinicians like NPs and PAs. Here’s a look at average hospitalist group size by different types of practice, including region, employment model, and academic vs. nonacademic:     Patient type Adult hospitalists: 25.7 physicians, 6.7 nonphysician clinicians Pediatric hospitalists: 12.7 doctors, 1.7 nonphysician clinicians Nonacademic vs. academic practice Non ..read more

TIMOTHY JOHNSON, MD, is so intent on changing perceptions about working nights—from them being a slog that residents must endure to being a great opportunity to both learn and advance patient care—that he changed the terminology around night work when he started as a nocturnist attending in 2018. “We no longer call it ‘the night shift’ or ‘night float’ but ‘night medicine,’ ” Dr. Johnson says. “We want people to understand that this isn’t just a shift to get through until we hand off patients to their primary team in the morning.” In fact, he adds, “what happens at night is just as important ..read more

HOW DOES YEARS of work experience affect hospitalist pay? To answer that question, we looked at data from our 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey. To start, mean compensation for all hospitalists who treat adults was $339,348. That number goes up or down depending on years in the field as well as how long hospitalists have been in their current jobs, although the differences between highs and lows aren’t necessarily large. The biggest pay differences were reported based on how long hospitalists have worked in the specialty. For example, there’s a 25% difference between n ..read more

WORKING EXTRA SHIFTS? How much does a hospitalist’s annual compensation come from working additional work hours? According to data from our 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey, hospitalists who treat adults and who received any compensation from working more shifts got 11.4% of their total pay from working those additional hours. Here’s a look at how much income specific groups of hospitalists—by region, employment model and years in the specialty—earned from extra shift work: •  Income from extra shifts was slightly above average for nonacademic hospitalists (12.5 ..read more

AT THE START of medical school, we met our first patient during our human anatomy course. We were curious and excited to study what happened to this person during their life. We hypothesized as to their cause of death—and at some point, we confirmed that hypothesis. The visual of our first patient stays with us even as we start to rationalize that person as parts that we need to study. But someone died and donated themselves to lay in this space and teach us about something more important than body parts. That first patient is a reminder that we are charged to both save lives and prepare our ..read more

HOSPITALISTS ON AVERAGE see bonuses of about $40,000, according to Today’s Hospitalist survey data. But how are those bonuses calculated? The 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey asked hospitalists if their extra payments were calculated on individual or group performance and what specific metrics factor into those calculations. Here are some details from survey responses. Individual vs. group performance Just under one-third (29.1%) of hospitalist bonuses are based on individual performance alone, while 21.7% are based solely on group performance. That leaves just under ..read more

HOW DO ACADEMIC hospitalists compare to their nonacademic counterparts? According to data from the 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey, academic hospitalists work slightly fewer hours and have fewer patient encounters, and they make less money. But they’re also a tad less concerned about burnout, with more of them claiming that burnout is insignificant in their careers. Here’s a look at what academic hospitalists told us about themselves in our latest survey. Compensation Overall Academic: $295,326 Nonacademic: $341,741 Pay from bonuses/incentives Academic:$35,651 Nonac ..read more

CERTIFIED LETTERS are hardly ever good news, and this is one of the worst: Somebody thinks you violated the standard of medical care and has filed a complaint against you with your state board. Maybe you remember the case; probably you don’t, but the suggestion that you’re a lousy doctor and the implied threat to your career are things you can’t ignore. So you pull up the records (if you can, and if federal privacy regulations won’t get you into worse trouble). You look up the literature that supports what you did or didn’t do. Some of us ask a friend or colleague about it, or you check to se ..read more

WHAT DO AVERAGE nocturnists working in U.S. hospitals earn, how many shifts a month do they work and how many patient encounters do they have per shift? According to data from the 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey, nocturnists do earn more money than their colleagues who work days, but the differences in pay—and other factors like hours—aren’t always as pronounced as you might think. Here’s a look at the data. Pay In our survey, nocturnists reported a mean compensation of $360,372. That’s about 6% higher than the $339,438 mean pay figure reported by all adult hospitali ..read more

Check back often as we continue to post timely updates on COVID-19.  In early March 2020, Dhaval Desai, MD, returned to work from a 10-day paternity leave to find a transformed practice; he was immediately thrown into preparations for the novel coronavirus that was dominating the news and figured things wouldn’t be too different. Read how he details just how catastrophically different covid turned out to be. March 1, 2024 Pandemic fallout: 130K cancers may have gone undetected in pandemic’s first year A new study on national cancer trends found that annual cancer screening rates fell alm ..read more