Recruiting a colorectal surgeon.

What does a colorectal surgeon earn?

BLS counts colorectal surgeons in Surgeons, All Other, according to its title list, so there is no colorectal series. That group spans many surgical fields and is not a colorectal benchmark.

Hospital offers pay a salary with productivity incentives and call stipends; private practices pay on production and may share endoscopy or surgery center income. Candidates compare the case mix, how much colonoscopy is included, and the support for cancer care.

Where do colorectal surgeons look for jobs?

Where new hires come from

Most new hires finish a fellowship after residency

Who employs them

Hospitals and cancer centers, colon and rectal surgery groups, general surgery practices adding a subspecialist, and academic medical centers.

Who you compete with for candidates

Academic centers with inflammatory bowel disease and cancer programs, and general surgeons and gastroenterologists who handle part of the same work.

Fellows complete a single year of colon and rectal surgery training after general surgery residency, and the fellowship classes are small. Program directors and the surgeons they trained under know where each fellow hopes to practice.

Experienced colorectal surgeons move for a cancer program with the right partners: gastroenterology, oncology, radiation oncology and pathology that support complex care. Describing that team is the most persuasive part of an offer.

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 colorectal surgery position cost?

What the calculator has for colon and rectal surgery

• Revenue one physician brings in: no published figure, so you supply the annual revenue one physician in the specialty brings your organization
• Locum pay: no published figure, so you supply the hourly rate in your locum agency’s quote
• First-year pay: no published figure, so you supply the first-year pay you expect to offer
• Contingency agency fee: 20 to 30% of first-year pay (estimate, MedStaff Nationwide, 2026)

The calculator holds no revenue figure or locum pay range for colon and rectal surgery, so it shows no worked example for the specialty; enter your own figures to price the job boards and an agency fee.

The cost a hospital sees is referral leakage: rectal cancers, complex inflammatory bowel disease and reoperations sent to a regional center, along with the imaging, chemotherapy and follow-up care that goes with them.

Open the calculator with your own figures

Which recruiting channels work for colon and rectal surgery?

With so few fellows, personal outreach matters most. A hospital should be ready to show its cancer program's volumes and the partners a new surgeon would work with, and to let candidates meet them on the visit rather than only the administrators.

Questions to ask

• How many colorectal cancer and inflammatory bowel disease cases does the hospital see?
• How much colonoscopy would the surgeon perform?
• Which gastroenterologists and oncologists would refer?
• Is there a multidisciplinary tumor board?

Which rules bite colorectal surgery recruiting?

Hospitals and cancer centers pay colorectal surgeons who admit there and order the services they bill, so the referral laws govern the offer.

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.