Recruiting an internist.

What does an internist earn?

Ranked among the states and the District of Columbia where BLS publishes both the mean wage and the employment figure; 8 of the 51 are left out because BLS withholds or top-codes a figure or has no row. The internal medicine salary page has every state, the metro areas and BLS’s caveats.

General internal medicine physicians have a BLS mean of $267,200 (BLS, May 2025 release) a year, a median of $256,560 (BLS, May 2025 release), and about 67,150 (BLS, May 2025 release) on payrolls. BLS does not separate hospitalists from clinic internists, so the figure blends two jobs with different hours and pay structures.

Hospitalist offers are usually a base rate per shift or a salary for a fixed number of shifts, with extra pay for nights and additional shifts. Outpatient offers look like family medicine: a guarantee that becomes production pay, judged by panel size, visit length and inbox burden.

Where do internists look for jobs?

Where new hires come from

Most new hires come straight from residency

Who employs them

Hospitals and their hospitalist programs, national hospitalist companies, health system primary care groups, independent practices, community health centers and concierge practices.

Who you compete with for candidates

Subspecialty fellowships that draw residents away, hospitalist companies with many sites, and concierge practices offering small panels and long visits.

Internal medicine residents choose between fellowship and practice during the second year of training. The ones who stay general decide on hospital or clinic work early, and hospital programs often meet them through moonlighting shifts during residency.

For experienced hospitalists the schedule template matters most, so state the block length and the night coverage model in the first lines of a posting.

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 internal medicine position cost?

What the calculator has for internal medicine

• Revenue one physician brings in: $2,675,387 a year (estimate, AMN Healthcare (Merritt Hawkins), 2019)
• Locum pay: $120 to $130 an hour (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025)
• First-year pay: $267,200 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 holds a survey figure of $2,675,387 (estimate, AMN Healthcare (Merritt Hawkins), 2019) a year to an affiliated hospital per internist, which captures admissions and tests that a clinic does not bill itself. A hospitalist vacancy shows up instead as locum shifts and overtime for the remaining team, at $120 to $130 (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025) an hour in locum physician pay.

For an outpatient practice the vacancy is a panel nobody owns. Patients wait for appointments, use urgent care, and some move to another group permanently.

Open the calculator with internal medicine chosen

Which recruiting channels work for internal medicine?

Separate the hospitalist search from the clinic search. They reach different candidates through different channels, and one posting that tries to cover both rarely fills either.

Questions to ask

• Is the opening a hospitalist role, a clinic role, or a mix, and does the posting say which?
• What block schedule and night coverage does the hospitalist team run?
• How large is the panel a new outpatient internist inherits?
• Do you lose residents you trained to fellowships, and could a clinic role with teaching keep some?

Which rules bite internal medicine recruiting?

Internists admit, refer and order heavily, so the federal limits on how hospitals pay them apply to almost every internal medicine offer a health system makes.

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.