Recruiting a physiatrist.

What does a physiatrist earn?

BLS places physiatrists in its broad group for physicians without an occupation of their own, so there is no federal figure for the specialty. The two halves of the field pay differently anyway, which makes a single benchmark misleading.

Inpatient roles at rehabilitation hospitals usually pay a salary with a medical director stipend for some. Outpatient roles pay on production, and interventional spine procedures and electrodiagnostic studies drive the difference between offers.

Where do physiatrists look for jobs?

Where new hires come from

New hires come from residency or after a fellowship

Who employs them

Inpatient rehabilitation hospitals and units, orthopedic and spine practices, pain and musculoskeletal clinics, academic departments and veterans' health care.

Who you compete with for candidates

Interventional spine and pain practices offering procedure-heavy work, orthopedic groups, and rehabilitation hospital companies with many sites.

Residents finish physical medicine and rehabilitation training and many add a fellowship in pain medicine, sports medicine, spinal cord injury or brain injury medicine. Pain and sports fellows are courted by outpatient practices; brain and spinal cord injury fellows by rehabilitation hospitals.

Physiatrists find jobs through program faculty, through the orthopedic surgeons they worked with, and through rehabilitation hospital companies that recruit for several sites at once.

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 physiatry position cost?

What the calculator has for physical medicine and rehabilitation

• Revenue one physician brings in: no published figure, so you supply the annual revenue one physician in the specialty brings your organization
• Locum pay: $190 to $205 an hour (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025)
• 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 publishes no revenue figure for physiatry, so the worked example leaves room for yours. For a rehabilitation hospital, an empty position limits admissions, since each patient needs a physiatrist to oversee the stay.

Locum physiatrists are paid $190 to $205 (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025) an hour and are a common bridge for inpatient units. Outpatient practices tend to absorb the gap with longer waits for injections and nerve studies.

Open the calculator with physical medicine and rehabilitation chosen

Which recruiting channels work for physical medicine and rehabilitation?

Name the half of the specialty you are hiring for in the first line of every posting and conversation; physiatrists sort jobs that way before anything else.

Questions to ask

• Is the role inpatient, outpatient, or a mix, and does the posting say so?
• Which procedures and studies will the physiatrist perform?
• Is a medical director role included, with written duties?
• How quickly can admissions resume once the role is filled?

Which rules bite physiatry recruiting?

Physiatrists order physical and occupational therapy, both designated health services, and many work in practices that own therapy clinics, so pay design is where the rules bite.

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.