Recruiting a cardiologist.

What does a cardiologist earn?

Ranked among the states and the District of Columbia where BLS publishes both the mean wage and the employment figure; 31 of the 51 are left out because BLS withholds or top-codes a figure or has no row. The cardiology salary page has every state, the metro areas and BLS’s caveats.

The BLS figures for cardiologists: a mean of $454,940 (BLS, May 2025 release) a year, a median of $496,010 (BLS, May 2025 release), and roughly 17,290 (BLS, May 2025 release) employed. The occupation lumps the subspecialties together, so the mean hides a wide spread between a general cardiologist in a clinic and an interventionalist who takes call for the lab.

Hospital offers are usually a guaranteed salary that converts to pay per work unit, with call stipends and a medical directorship for some. Private groups that remain independent offer partnership, often with a share of outpatient imaging or an ambulatory facility.

Where do cardiologists look for jobs?

Where new hires come from

Most new hires finish a fellowship after residency

Who employs them

Hospital-employed cardiology groups, academic medical centers, the remaining independent cardiology practices, and multispecialty groups.

Who you compete with for candidates

Health systems building heart programs that can offer a new lab or a structural heart team, and academic centers that offer protected research time.

General cardiology fellows finish after internal medicine residency and a cardiology fellowship; interventional, electrophysiology and advanced imaging candidates add another year or more. Each group of fellows is small, and program directors know who is looking and where they want to live.

The American College of Cardiology runs its own career center, where fellowship postings stay up longer than regular ones. Experienced cardiologists rarely answer ads; they move when a hospital acquisition, a call schedule or a lab closure changes the job they have.

• ACC Career Center Per posting

  $499 per 30-day posting

  The cardiology society's own board, with a published posting price and a longer run for fellowship positions. Describe the subspecialty and the lab in the first line.

Every board’s listing, with its posting lengths and how CV access is sold, is in the job board directory; what a physician job posting costs compares them.

The locum agency directory has each agency’s states, malpractice coverage and physician pay where it states them.

What does an open cardiology position cost?

What the calculator has for cardiology

• Revenue one physician brings in: $2,310,000 to $3,484,375 a year (estimate, AMN Healthcare (Merritt Hawkins), 2019)
• Locum pay: $275 to $375 an hour (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025)
• First-year pay: $454,940 a year (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025)
• Contingency agency fee: 20 to 30% of first-year pay (estimate, MedStaff Nationwide, 2026)

The calculator's revenue figure for cardiology is a range, $2,310,000 to $3,484,375 (estimate, AMN Healthcare (Merritt Hawkins), 2019) a year to the affiliated hospital, running from noninvasive to invasive cardiologists in the survey it comes from. That revenue is the hospital's tests, procedures and admissions, which is why hospitals recruit cardiologists so hard; an independent practice should use its own collections instead.

Locum cardiologists cost $275 to $375 (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025) an hour in physician pay. An interventional vacancy can also mean the lab cannot keep its call schedule, so heart attack patients are sent to another hospital, a cost the calculator does not price.

Open the calculator with cardiology chosen

Which recruiting channels work for cardiology?

Start from the subspecialty. The channel that finds a general cardiologist for a satellite clinic is not the one that finds an electrophysiologist for an ablation program, and the timelines differ by a year or more.

Questions to ask

• Which subspecialty does the position need, and could a general cardiologist fill it at all?
• How is call for the catheterization lab shared today, and what changes with the new hire?
• Is a directorship part of the offer, with written duties and hours?
• What does the hospital's equipment and lab plan look like over the next few years?

Which rules bite cardiology recruiting?

Cardiologists order tests and admissions that hospitals bill, and they work with device companies. That puts their pay, their directorships and their industry ties under the federal referral and disclosure rules.

Every federal rule this site cites, grouped by what a practice or recruiter is doing, is on the federal rules page. For the contract itself (pay models, tail coverage, restrictive covenants), read the physician employment contract, clause by clause. These notes describe the rules and cite them; they are not legal advice for a particular offer or contract.