Recruiting a family physician.

What does a family physician earn?

Ranked among the states and the District of Columbia where BLS publishes both the mean wage and the employment figure; 3 of the 51 are left out because BLS withholds or top-codes a figure or has no row. The family medicine salary page has every state, the metro areas and BLS’s caveats.

Family medicine physicians average $255,820 (BLS, May 2025 release) a year in the BLS survey, with a median of $244,180 (BLS, May 2025 release), and about 107,510 (BLS, May 2025 release) work on payrolls, more than in any single specialty BLS reports.

Most offers are a guaranteed salary for the first one to three years that converts to a production formula based on work units. Candidates weigh call and hospital work, obstetrics if the job includes it, the number of patients scheduled a day, and support such as medical assistants and nurse practitioners as heavily as the salary line.

Where do family physicians look for jobs?

Where new hires come from

Most new hires come straight from residency

Who employs them

Health systems and their employed groups, community health centers, independent practices, rural hospitals, urgent care and retail clinics, and the military and federal agencies.

Who you compete with for candidates

Urgent care, telehealth and retail clinic employers offering shift work without a panel or call, and large systems that can pay a sign-on bonus in every market.

Residents often start talking to employers in the second year of a three-year program and usually sign during the third. Many stay near where they trained, which makes residency programs in your region the most valuable recruiting relationship you can build.

Physicians with a few years of practice move for schedule and burnout more than salary. A posting that states the visit length, the panel size and how inbox work is handled answers the questions they actually ask.

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 family medicine position cost?

What the calculator has for family medicine

• Revenue one physician brings in: $2,111,931 a year (estimate, AMN Healthcare (Merritt Hawkins), 2019)
• Locum pay: $120 to $135 an hour (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025)
• First-year pay: $255,820 a year (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025)
• Contingency agency fee: 20 to 30% of first-year pay (estimate, MedStaff Nationwide, 2026)

Here the calculator has all of its figures. Revenue to an affiliated hospital is published at $2,111,931 (estimate, AMN Healthcare (Merritt Hawkins), 2019) a year per family physician, a survey estimate that counts downstream admissions and tests, so a standalone practice should replace it with its own collections. Locum pay runs $120 to $135 (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025) an hour.

The larger cost is patients who cannot get in. A panel without a physician sends patients to urgent care and emergency rooms, and some do not come back once another practice accepts them.

Open the calculator with family medicine chosen

Which recruiting channels work for family medicine?

Volume is on the employer's side only in the sense that there are many family physicians; demand is broad enough that every channel is crowded. In rural areas the federal programs are part of the offer, not a recruiting afterthought.

Questions to ask

• Is your site in a Health Professional Shortage Area, and what is its score?
• How many visits a day does the schedule assume, and how long is each one?
• Does the position include hospital work, obstetrics or call, and is that said in the posting?
• Which nearby residency programs have sent you residents for a rotation?

Which rules bite family medicine recruiting?

Family physicians refer heavily to hospitals and specialists, which is why health systems that employ them structure pay carefully, and why the federal recruiting programs come with service obligations attached.

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.