Recruiting a geriatrician.

What does a geriatrician earn?

There is no geriatric medicine occupation in the BLS survey, and its title list does not name geriatricians, so the panel above names the group whose definition takes in physicians not listed separately. That group's pay says nothing specific about geriatrics.

Geriatricians train in internal or family medicine and add a fellowship year, yet offers often look like general primary care pay. Employers that want them close the gap with medical director stipends at nursing facilities, loan repayment, and schedules built around fewer, longer visits.

Where do geriatricians look for jobs?

Where new hires come from

Most new hires finish a fellowship after residency

Who employs them

Academic geriatrics programs, health system primary care and senior clinics, post-acute and nursing facility medical groups, home-based primary care and house-call programs, hospice, and federal programs for veterans.

Who you compete with for candidates

Post-acute care companies offering medical director roles, home-based care programs with flexible schedules, and general internal medicine jobs that pay as much without the fellowship.

Geriatric fellows usually decide during the fellowship year and are known personally to their program directors. Many want a mix of clinic, nursing facility and teaching work, and they choose employers that let them build it.

Experienced geriatricians often hold several part-time roles at once, such as clinic days and a facility directorship. An employer that can combine those into one coherent position, with the support staff geriatric care needs, has something unusual to 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 geriatrics position cost?

What the calculator has for geriatric medicine

• 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 has no published revenue figure or locum pay range for geriatric medicine, so it offers no worked example; enter your own figures under another specialty to price the boards and an agency fee.

The costs that matter are clinical and hard to put in a column: hospital readmissions from nursing facilities without physician oversight, falls and medication problems in frail patients, and families who move a parent's care elsewhere.

Open the calculator with your own figures

Which recruiting channels work for geriatric medicine?

Recruit the fellow and the fellowship together. Supporting a fellowship, or offering a site for fellows to train, is the most reliable pipeline for a field this small.

Questions to ask

• How is the role split among clinic, facility and home visits?
• Is a nursing facility directorship included, and is it paid separately?
• Is the site eligible for loan repayment?
• What support staff, such as nurses and social workers, come with the role?

Which rules bite geriatrics recruiting?

Geriatricians often hold medical directorships at facilities they also refer patients to, and nearly all of their patients are on Medicare, so the referral laws apply directly.

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.