While we don’t recommend accepting a new position solely based on salary considerations, knowing and being paid your worth is essential to career longevity and combatting physician burnout. You’ve worked hard to get to this point and deserve to be compensated appropriately. For family medicine doctors, having transparency about what the average family medicine physician salary is (and information about other typical parts of the compensation package) is essential to leverage during your contract negotiations for a new job.
On our physician communities, we’ve seen so many physicians express that they’ve been undervalued, and feel that physicians need to negotiate their worth in the marketplace, which is why we feel so strongly about compiling aggregate physician salary data on what doctors make, and making it available to our members for free, as opposed to having to pay for expensive databases that may not break down information in a way that allows an apples to apples comparison for their particular job description.
Average physician salaries depend on several factors. Specialty is one of the most important to take into consideration, so we’ve broken down the aggregate data from our physician salary and compensation database provided by physicians across the country to help assess how much doctors make by specialty.
Other factors such as hours worked, location, and practice environment all play a role as well, so we look at differences in some of these categories as well. Unless otherwise noted, the data included in our analysis below was collected from mid-2023 through mid-2024.
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.
Article Navigation
Average Family Medicine Physician Salary in 2024
The average annual salary across all our family medicine physicians who contributed to our salary and compensation data in 2024 was $283,000. This excludes residents or fellows, focusing on attending physicians.
Providing a single average annual salary for a family medicine physician, however, can be misleading, as several different factors come into play. We want to break this number down a to help you find more relevant comparison points.
Average Full-Time Family Medicine Physician Salary for 2024
Many family medicine physicians work full-time, but part-time contributions can skew the overall average, so let’s look at them separately.
For a full-time equivalent, we assumed an average number of hours worked a week of 36 hours or more. (We omitted any data points that did not specify their average.)
The average family medicine physician salary for a full-time FM doctor in 2024 was $295,000. To give you an idea on the range of the salary around the average, a few extra stats:
The highest reported salaries for family medicine doctors were in the $550,000 - $600,000 a year range.
The lowest reported salaries for family medicine doctors were in the $150,000 a year range.
The median salary across all submitted data points for full-time family medicine doctors was $305,000.
Average Part-Time Family Medicine Physician Salary for 2024
Several of our physician members reported working part-time.
To assess a part-time average, we looked at attending physicians who reported working 16-25 hours a week. We don’t have enough data points to break this down further, so please consider contributing if you haven’t already for future updates to this page. Find links to contribute on our physician salary and compensation data page.
The average part-time family medicine physician salary for 2024 was $206,000.
How Much Family Medicine Doctors Make by Specialization
We had a few different specialties family medicine physicians could select when contributing to our databases. Since specialization can pay heavily into salary, let’s look at the average salary breakdown by these specialization categories. These numbers are for doctors that reported working 36+ hours per week or more.
Family Medicine (with OB) average physician salary - $312,000
Family Medicine (without OB) average physician salary - $299,000
Family Medicine Ambulatory Only (No Inpatient) average physician salary - $278,000
Family Medicine with Sports Medicine - not enough current data points to assess
Family Medicine: Urgent Care - not enough current data points to assess
Family Medicine Hospitalists average salary - $342,000
Outside of any other factors we look into below, family medicine hospitalists reported the highest average salary of all our family medicine physicians for specialties in which we had enough relevant data. We’ll look into salary differences by the practice environment below.
Family Medicine Physician Pay by Gender
We looked at reported pay for full-time physicians who reported working 36+ hours a week and compared what our female physicians averaged compared to their male counterparts, excluding all other factors (such as specialization, location, etc.).
Female family medicine physicians reported an average salary of $290,000. Male family medicine physicians reported an average salary of $307,000.
When looking strictly at the average salaries overall, our male doctors averaged around 6% higher salaries than our female doctors.
Family Medicine Physician Salary by Practice Environment
Looking at full-time (36+ hours a week average) family medicine attending physicians, we broke the data down by where our members reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Corporate group, non private equity - $314,000
Corporate group, private equity - $310,000
FQHC and other non-profits - $260,000
Government - $231,000
Group private practice, non private equity backed - $307,000
Group private practice, private equity backed - $287,000
Academic hospital employee - $295,000
Non-academic hospital employee - $304,000
Solo private practice - not enough data points to assess
While looking at all the different factors together can give you a much better idea of expected pay, our data for full-time family medicine physicians, not accounting for any other factors assessed above or below, suggests that FQHC (community clinics, etc.) and other nonprofits as well as government (VA, city hospital, etc.) positions pay family medicine physicians the least when it comes to strictly salary.
As a reminder, these governmental and nonprofit organizations can be eligible for many benefits, such as better health benefits, retirement plans and pensions, and Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). The lifestyle can also be significantly better in regards to call, patient volume, and hassles with insurance and private payors. Therefore, we are again reiterating the importance of looking at the entire compensation package on our salary and negotiation databases before deciding that one job really is better based on the salary alone.
The overall trends also suggest that from a salary standpoint, physicians who work for non-private backed employers earn more than their private equity counterparts.
Family Medicine Physician Salary by Type of Employment
When submitting data, our physician members indicated their type of employment. Looking at full-time attending physicians (36+ average hours a week):
1099 (single entity regular job, 1099 arrangement) - not enough data to assess
W2 employee - $287,000 a year
Locums/per diem - not enough data to assess*
Partner/owner - $374,000 a year
All other factors aside, our data suggests there is significant growth potential for family medicine physicians who are looking for a partner track or are interested in owning their own practice. Partners and owners averaged 30% higher than W2 employees.
Related PSG resources to explore:
* We have a separate locums pay and compensation data set, and have looked at the statistics on locum tenens compensation for doctors separately, where there is much more data about this.
How Much Family Medicine Doctors Make by Location
We looked at salary differences among states for full-time (36+ average hours a week) family medicine attending physicians. States with less than 10 data points were omitted from our analysis. If you don’t see your state listed and want to see where it stacks up, contribute your physician salary and compensation data today.
Lowest paying states for family medicine physicians:
Pennsylvania - $240,000 a year
Texas - $272,000 a year
Illinois - $276,000 a year
Michigan - $282,000 a year
Highest paying states for family medicine physicians:
California - $380,000 a year
North Carolina - $333,000 a year
Florida - $304,000 a year
Ohio - $297,000 a year
While what city or local metropolitan area a doctor resides in can factor heavily into the cost of living, and how much a physician actually brings home depends on state and local taxes, assessing different salary options across the country and comparing them to the cost of living can give physicians the potential to geoarbitrage if they are willing to move. Just make sure you know what is included in cost of living comparisons (taxes are often excluded and can be significant).
Family Medicine Doctor Pay by Hours Worked
Medicine can often be an “eat what you kill” industry, so we wanted to look at how average salaries varied by reported hours worked for our full-time attending family medicine physicians. Some of our members reported working 81+ hours a week, but the vast majority fell into the averages below. Not surprisingly, we do see a trend of increasing average salaries for family medicine physicians as hours increase.
36-40 hours a week average - $286,000 a year
41-45 hours a week average - $292,000 a year
46-50 hours a week average - $313,000 a year
51-60 hours a week average - $322,000 a year
While the data suggests your earnings potential can increase with the amount you’re willing to work, remember that a poor work/life balance is a key contributor to physician burnout. Working more in your career for a 3% increase in salary may end up costing you more in earnings potential over the life of your career if burnout causes you to want to consider other options outside of medicine.
As an aside, we know that so many family medicine physicians spend a lot of time at home charting. You may have heard us talking about AI scribes on the physician communities. They are becoming more and more widespread, and can 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 Family Medicine 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 family medicine doctors over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at family medicine doctors out of residency/fellowship who worked on average 36+ hours a week. For 2023, we combined the data from the old data and the new database, cutting off entries at the transition point to help omit any overlapping or duplicate information.
2018-2019: $234,000
2020-2021: $244,000 (4% increase)
2022-2023: $273,000 (11% increase)
With our average salary for family medicine physicians of $295,000 from our new database covering mid 2023 to mid 2024, we can see salaries continuing to increase for 2024. It’s also good to see not just the salaries increasing but the rate at which they are increasing growing as well. We hope with continued salary transparency, these trends will continue.
Extra Insights from Family Medicine 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 provided by other family medicine physicians that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations.
We want to close with a few that might be of use to other family medicine doctors:
Increasing Your Family Medicine Physician Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income as a family medicine physician. But a reminder first: remember to look at the overall picture, taking into consideration all the factors included above and others, such as other compensation in the overall employment package such as amount of PTO, call responsibilities, 401(k) match, etc. 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 red flags to watch out for.
If you’re looking to increase your income as a family medicine physician but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Opportunities to consider include:
Moonlighting opportunities
Asking for more on call, if available
Supplementing your regular clinical work with additional telemedicine
Explore more side gigs for family medicine doctors for ways to increase your income.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Family Medicine Physicians
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 and articles like this one 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 openings for family medicine physicians.
If you need guidance on negotiating your next contract for the best possible deal, check out:
Also check out our side gigs for family medicine physicians.