What does an open physician position cost?

It depends far more on how long the position stays open than on the ad or the agency. In the worked example above (family medicine, 120 days open, a locum for 60 of them) the routes come to job boards $392,606 to $397,748, agency $439,474 to $470,198, boards and agency $443,770 to $474,494, all estimates, and the largest single line is the revenue the empty schedule does not bring in.

Put in your own specialty, days and figures to see your case; every input shows where it came from in the data and assumptions below.

From the latest public edition of the AMN Healthcare (Merritt Hawkins) Physician Inpatient/Outpatient Revenue Survey, which asked hospital finance officers what one full-time physician brings the affiliated hospital in a year. By specialty it runs from $1,440,217 a year for ophthalmology to $2,310,000 to $3,484,375 a year for cardiology (estimate, AMN Healthcare (Merritt Hawkins), 2019).

That is revenue to a hospital, including tests and admissions the physician orders, so it is larger than what a practice collects. The survey gives one average per specialty, so the calculator prints it as an estimate. A practice with its own numbers should use them.

Agencies quote facilities per assignment and none publishes those rates. What is published is what the physician is paid: Locumstory, run by CHG Healthcare, lists hourly ranges by specialty, from $100 to $120 an hour for pediatrics to $375 to $500 an hour for hematology and oncology (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025).

The facility pays the agency more than that: its margin, travel, housing and malpractice coverage come on top. The calculator uses the published pay as the floor for the locum line; enter the rate from your agency’s quote to replace it. The locum agency directory lists who staffs which specialties.

Most quote a percentage of the physician’s first-year pay. MedStaff Nationwide gives 20 to 30% as the range most commonly quoted for a contingency search, owed only when you hire (estimate, MedStaff Nationwide, 2026), and the calculator uses that range. Retained searches bill part of the fee up front, whether or not the search fills.

On the worked example’s first-year pay of $255,820, that is $51,164 to $76,746. Ask any firm what you owe if the search never fills, and get the answer in writing.

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