Recruiting a thoracic surgeon.

What does a thoracic surgeon earn?

Thoracic surgeons are among the specialties BLS counts in Surgeons, All Other, as the panel above shows. The group's average cannot describe cardiothoracic pay specifically.

Offers are usually salaries with productivity incentives from hospitals or academic centers, plus call stipends and program leadership pay. Candidates compare the case volume, the team around them, and the hospital's investment in the program.

Where do thoracic surgeons look for jobs?

Where new hires come from

New hires come from residency or after a fellowship

Who employs them

Hospital heart and vascular institutes, cancer centers, academic medical centers and cardiothoracic surgery groups.

Who you compete with for candidates

Academic centers with transplant and structural heart programs, and large systems with high case volume.

Cardiothoracic surgeons train through a fellowship after general surgery or an integrated residency, and the graduates are few each year. Program directors and senior surgeons know them all and are the first call for any serious search.

Experienced surgeons move to lead or build a program. A posting for them is really a description of the program: volumes, perfusion and anesthesia support, intensive care, and the cardiology and pulmonology partners who refer.

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 thoracic surgery position cost?

What the calculator has for thoracic 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)

No revenue figure or locum pay range for thoracic surgery is published in the calculator, so it has no worked example; enter your own under another specialty to price an agency fee. For a hospital, the larger loss is the program itself: cardiac and lung cases sent to a competitor, and referring cardiologists who may follow.

Locum cardiothoracic surgeons exist, but a surgeon covering for weeks cannot keep a program growing. Hospitals use them to protect patients already scheduled while the permanent search runs.

Open the calculator with your own figures

Which recruiting channels work for thoracic surgery?

Searches this small run on reputation. The hospital's leaders and its cardiologists should be ready to meet candidates, and the offer should commit resources to the program in writing.

Questions to ask

• How many cardiac and thoracic cases does the program do a year, and what is the plan to grow?
• Is there perfusion, cardiac anesthesia and intensive care support at the level the cases need?
• Which cardiologists and pulmonologists refer, and will they meet candidates?
• What leadership role and resources come with the position?

Which rules bite thoracic surgery recruiting?

Hospitals pay thoracic surgeons salaries, stipends and leadership fees, and the surgeons' cases are hospital services, so the federal referral laws govern how those payments are built.

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.