Salary is a big part of whether a job ultimately ends up being a good fit, so it’s important for physicians to know their worth in the job market and to ask for it. Having access to salary data empowers doctors to know whether they are being compensated appropriately. We believe intensivists need salary transparency about what the average critical care physician salary is, as well as about other typical parts of the compensation package, so that they can leverage this information during contract negotiations.
We have therefore tried to provide both concrete data points as well as compile physician salary data on what doctors make, and make it available to our members for free, as opposed to having to pay for expensive databases. Using data gathered from our physician online communities, we have started this series on compensation data by specialty to assess aggregate data from our physician salary and compensation database provided by physicians across the country.
The data for critical care doctors below was compiled using data points anonymously contributed to our database between mid-2023 and mid-2024. Unless otherwise noted, the stats below are for full-time attending doctors, determined based on a full-time equivalency of an average 36+ hours worked a week. We excluded data contributed by residents and fellows.
Disclaimers/Disclosures: This information is derived from our physician salary and compensation databases, but is subject to self-reporting errors and availability of relevant data points from our online communities. This information is provided for educational purposes only, and is aimed at advocating for individual physicians. It is not intended to be used for collective bargaining; please see additional disclosures and disclaimers on the physician salary data pages. Please also do your own research before making any decisions based on the information provided. We are not formal financial, legal, or tax professionals and do not provide individualized advice. You should consult these as appropriate. We highly recommend having your physician employment agreement reviewed by a physician contract review attorney to ensure you have the most up to date and relevant information for your specific situation.
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How Much Does a Critical Care Doctor (Intensivist) Make in 2024?
The average annual salary across all of our contributing critical care physicians for 2024 was $445,000, including physicians practicing critical care part time and full time.
A single average annual salary can be misleading, as several factors affect salary. We break this number down further to help you find more relevant comparison points.
Average Full-Time Critical Care Physician (Intensivist) Salary for 2024
The vast majority of intensivists report working full-time. While we don’t have enough data points currently to provide a part-time average salary, we did exclude the ones we had to determine an average full-time salary.
The average salary for a full-time critical care physician for 2024 was $451,000. To give you an idea on the range of salaries around this average, a few extra stats:
The highest reported salary was $820,000 a year.
The lowest reported salary was $200,000 a year.
The median salary was $445,000.
How Much Critical Care Physicians Make by Specialization
As we’ve seen across our how much doctors make by specialty series, salaries can vary significantly based on specialization.
For critical care, we had a few different specialties doctors reported. Additional specialties mentioned included:
Cardiovascular critical care
Infectious disease critical care
Neonatology
Surgical critical care
If you would like to see this section updated and expanded in the future to include these specialties, please contribute your anonymous physicians salary and compensation data today to provide enough data points to analyze.
Average Anesthesia Critical Care Physician Salary
The average salary reported by anesthesia critical care physicians was $467,000 for 2024. This is 4% higher than the average for all critical care physicians. While we noted that many critical care physicians reported working 36-45 hours a week, our anesthesia specialists reported average work weeks of 46-60 hours a week. We look more into how much critical care doctors work below.
Average Neurocritical Care Physician Salary
All the data points we currently have for neurocritical care doctors are below the overall average, but we don’t currently have enough data to assess a true average with confidence. We hope to update this section in the future.
Average Pulmonary Critical Care Physician Salary
A majority of our critical care physicians reported specializing in pulmonary critical care medicine (PCCM). The average salary for a pulmonary critical care physician was similar to the overall average at $456,000. Salaries ranged from $200,000 to $820,000, with a median salary of $435,000.
Our PCCM doctors are able to note if they practice both general and critical care pulmonary or focus specifically on critical care medicine as a subspecialty of pulmonary medicine. While we would love to evaluate how salaries differ depending on their focus, we don’t currently have enough data points to break down this specialty further.
Average Salary for Pediatric Intensivists
Since this specialty is usually a specialization through a pediatric residency, we covered it separately in our article on how much physicians in pediatric specialties make. The average full-time salary for a pediatric intensivist was $327,000, which was the highest paying of the pediatric specialties we assessed, but lower than an intensivist that came through a different residency path.
Critical Care Physician Salary by Gender
We compared what our female doctors averaged in earnings compared to their male counterparts.
Female intensivists reported an average salary of $418,000. Male intensivists reported 14% higher earnings with an average salary of $477,000. This is around the average we’ve seen across several other medical specialties as well.
How Much Critical Care Doctors Make by Practice Environment
We also broke down the data by where our members reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Group private practices: $441,000
Academic hospitals: $382,000
Non-academic hospitals: $493,000
While we don’t have enough data points to assess an average yet, we noted that physicians who reported working for corporate groups typically reported higher than average salaries.
Within the hospital system environment, critical care doctors working for non-academic institutions averaged 29% more than their academic colleagues, though we always like to remind physicians that this accounts only for salaries. Academic hospitals often qualify for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and better retirement packages, which can be a significant benefit in the overall compensation package, which is one of the reasons we say to consider not just the salary but the entire proposed offer.
Intensivists working in non-academic hospitals also averaged 12% more than doctors working for group private practices. We usually see the reverse trend, where private practice physicians report higher earnings. Often, we have several doctors in private practice that are owners/partners in their practices, and employment type can often make a large difference in earnings potential. As of now, less than 2% of our contributions reported this employment type, as less than 10% of our physicians reported working in private practice. This might be skewing the data.
We would love to further assess how the type of employment factors in and to reassess averages with additional private practice contributions in the future.
Contribute your anonymous physician salary and compensation data today to help.
Critical Care Physician Salary by Location
Our intensivists are spread around the country, so we don’t have average salaries yet by state to compare salaries by states (yet!), as we tend to want more data points in each location before commenting on trends.
How Much Critical Care Doctors Make by Hours Worked
Medicine can often be an “eat what you kill” industry, so we wanted to look at how average salaries varied in 2024 by reported hours worked by our critical care doctors.
36-40 hours a week - $427,000
41-45 hours a week - $449,000 (5% increase)
46-50 hours a week - $457,000 (2% increase)
51-60 hours a week - $488,000 (7% increase)
61+ hours a week - $459,000
In general, we see that salaries increase with hours worked, though it’s important to note it isn’t necessarily a one-for-one tradeoff of time for money. For example, critical care doctors working 41-45 hours a week work about 15% more than those working 36-40, yet their salaries on average are only 5% more. Depending on your job and your interests, a physician side gig might offer a better ROI if you are looking for ways to increase your salary.
While the data suggests that the physicians who reported the most didn’t necessarily make the most, this may be due to a reporting error, as we note in the section below on how much critical care doctors work.
How Much Critical Care Physicians Work
The majority of intensivists work 41-50 hours a week on average. We noted that a significant number also reported working 71+ hours a week. Apart from one owner/partner in a private practice, the rest were hospital employees. As we’ve noted with some other specialties in our how much doctors make series, this may be due to reporting and how shifts are determined. For example, many of our 7-on, 7-off doctors who work in hospitals noted working ~80 hours a week, but then having half the year off. Yet, over the year as a whole, they work the same number of hours as doctors who work ~40 hours a week weekly. As such, we suspect that the vast majority of these doctors may actually fall within the 36-45 hours a week range when averaged out over the entire year.
We also like to note that these reported hours worked don’t include time spent charting at home, which can add a significant burden for doctors as well. Critical care doctors reported spending less time charting at home than many of the other specialties we’ve covered so far, but 17% still reported spending 5+ additional hours a week doing so.
If you find yourself spending a lot of time at home charting, an AI scribe may be able to dramatically decrease the amount of time you spend charting. We have a free trial and a long standing discount on an AI scribing solution in our practice resources for physicians, in case you need one!
Changes in Average Critical Care Physician Salary Over Time
As noted above, the data analyzed included contributions from mid 2023 to mid 2024, reflecting data from our most recent salary and compensation database.
We also dug into our previous salary database we started in 2018 to get an idea of the trends in average pay for critical care doctors over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at intensivists out of residency/fellowship who worked on average 36+ hours a week. For 2023, we combined the data from the old database and the new database, cutting off entries at the transition point to help omit any overlapping or duplicate information.
2018-2019: $350,000
2020-2021: $398,000 (14% increase)
2022-2023: $451,000 (13% increase)
2024: $451,000
We can see in general how salaries for critical care doctors are increasing over time. While reported 2024 salaries are currently the same as 2022-2023, it is a smaller time frame than the other ranges reported. We also noted that many of our highest reported salaries are RVU based and, as our members pointed out, “eat what you kill.” With a smaller dataset, how much doctors work and their corresponding RVUs can heavily affect average salaries.
Learn more about RVU based physician contracts.
We look forward to tracking these trends in salaries over time as our database continues and grows in the future. You can help by contributing your physician salary and compensation data today.
Additional Insights into Critical Care Compensation Packages
In addition to salary information, physicians contributing to our databases include other compensation data as well. We plan to dive further into complete compensation packages later, but for now, we have included some key insights critical care doctors might find interesting.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses Critical Care Doctors Receive
52% of our critical care doctors reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with an average amount of $32,000. Signing bonuses varied by an order of magnitude, ranging from $10,000 all the way to $110,000.
Learn more about signing bonuses for physicians.
We’re starting to hear of a trend of rising signing bonuses across specialties. While the average for signing bonuses is roughly the same for 2024 versus 2023, we did note that the 6-figure signing bonuses were reported in 2024. The highest reported signing bonus for 2023 was $75,000, or almost 50% less. We also, however, saw several $10,000 signing bonuses in 2024. The huge range in potential signing bonuses is one of the several reasons we almost always recommend working with a contract review attorney for physicians who can help you assess your current local market to negotiate for the best possible overall employment package.
38% of our critical care doctors reported receiving a moving bonus, with an average of $12,000. Relocation bonuses ranged from $1,000 to $20,000.
Average Vacation Days Critical Care Physicians Receive
The average and median number of annual vacation days critical care physicians received was 25 days. Reported vacation time varied anywhere from three to eight weeks.
Many doctors mentioned due to the straight RVU structure model of their contracts, they didn’t receive any paid time off. Others mentioned their shift schedule allowed for plenty of time off, but that it wasn’t compensated, so it wasn’t an additional paid benefit as part of their compensation package.
CME Stipends for Critical Care Doctors
74% of our critical care doctors reported receiving some sort of CME stipend. Stipends ranged from $1,000 - $10,000 annually, with an average of $4,700.
Average Student Loan Debt for Critical Care
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our critical care doctors who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $287,000. The higher your federal loan debt burden, the more beneficial repayment programs and loan forgiveness programs can be.
Learn more about doctor student loans. If you’ve been considering refinancing to help with the debt burden, you can also explore our student loan refinancing options.
Extra Insights from Critical Care Physicians
As part of our salary and compensation data contributions, members of our physician online community can provide additional comments. As we compiled the data, we also looked for additional insights that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations. A few that might be of use to other critical care physicians:
Increasing Your Critical Care Physician Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income in critical care medicine. But a reminder: remember to look at the overall picture. Salary is a key component to physician compensation, but it isn’t the only part of a well negotiated physician employment contract.
If you like where you work but don’t love the pay, consider setting aside a time to talk with management. If you are a valued part of their team, they may be willing to work with you to renegotiate your contract versus risking you leaving. Their answer may be no, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Be practical in what you’re expecting and respectful in your request. Diving deeper into the salary and compensation data for physicians for comparable situations can help you get a target idea of what to try to renegotiate for.
Looking for additional career opportunities can also help. Sometimes, an employer may either not be able to or just not willing to work with you to get you to where you should be. That doesn’t mean every job will come with the same constraints. Interviewing for a few other positions can give you a feel of what the market looks like from the employer’s perspective by what employers are willing to offer. Explore open opportunities on our Physician Side Gigs job board, and explore all our physician career resources and education to help you navigate the job search process.
While we think the data above and in our database can be a great tool during the negotiation process, we almost always also recommend hiring a local contract review attorney for physicians to review your contract. They will have invaluable experience when it comes to negotiating physician contracts, including understanding what contract red flags to watch out for.
If you’re looking to increase your income as a critical care doctor but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Explore popular medical and non-medical side hustles for doctors.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Critical Care Doctors
Explore our related articles and resources on doctor compensation and salaries:
If you haven’t recently, please take a few minutes to contribute! The data provided is used only for the purpose of our database to help physicians like yourself negotiate better compensation by helping provide salary transparency with relevant data. The data is completely anonymous and is only available to members of our Physician Side Gigs Facebook group. Contribution links can be found on our compensation data for physicians page.
Looking for a new career opportunity? Explore the Physician Side Gigs job board for current opportunities.
If you need guidance on negotiating your next contract for the best possible deal, check out:
Also check out all our side gig ideas for doctors.