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 ask for it. Having access to salary data empowers doctors to know whether they are being compensated appropriately. We believe those practicing gastroenterology need salary transparency about what the average gastroenterologist 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.
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How Gastroenterology Aggregate Stats Were Determined
The data for gastroenterologists below was compiled using 90 data points anonymously contributed to our database between mid-2023 and mid-2024. While we typically like to have more data points before assessing aggregate statistics for a specialty, at the time of this article, we only had 90 data points available. Unless otherwise noted, the stats below are for full-time attending gastroenterologists, determined based on a full-time equivalency of an average 36+ hours worked a week. We excluded data contributed by residents and fellows.
Smaller datasets may be less representative of the overall landscape of the specialty. Please see our note in the “changes in salaries in gastroenterology” section below. As such, a reminder to access the full free doctor salary and negotiation database to compare your situation to the relevant data from the data points available.
We would love to reassess the statistics and further expand insights based upon future data. As such, we will continue to update this page as more contributions are received.
If you haven’t already, please contribute your 2024 physician salary and negotiation data to help others in your specialty.
How Much Does a Gastroenterologist Make in 2024?
The average annual salary across all of our contributing gastroenterologists for 2024 was $606,000, including physicians practicing gastroenterology 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 Gastroenterologist Salary for 2024
While part-time work is common in many medical specialties, over 90% of the gastroenterology doctors who have contributed to our salary and compensation database reported working full time.
Removing the few part-time contributions that we have in our dataset, the average salary for a full-time gastroenterologist for 2024 was $625,000. To give you an idea on the range of the salary around this average, a few extra stats:
The highest reported salary was $1,600,000 a year.
5 salaries were reported above the $1,000,000 range.
The lowest reported salary was $230,000 a year.
Another 11 salaries were reported in the $300,000s a year range.
The median salary was $600,000.
We cover who earns the most in gastroenterology further below.
How Much Gastroenterologists Make by Specialization
As with many of the other highly specialized fields of medicine we’ve covered in our how much doctors make by specialty series, we don’t currently have enough data points to conclusively draw average salaries by subspecialty. We can, however, look at the qualitative trends for the data we have.
If you would like to see this section expanded in the future, please contribute your doctor salary and compensation data anonymously if you haven’t already for this year.
Advanced Endoscopy. All data points we have for gastroenterologists who specialize in advanced endoscopy reported salaries higher than the averages.
Hepatology. Our reported salaries for gastroenterologists who specialize in hepatology range all the way from the lower end of overall salaries at $345,000 to well over the average at $750,000. We noticed that the lowest reported salaries were by doctors who worked in academic hospitals, while the highest worked in private practices. As we discuss below, the practice environment can influence physician salaries significantly.
Gastroenterologist Salary by Gender
We also compared what our female doctors averaged in earnings compared to their male counterparts.
Female gastroenterologists reported an average salary of $522,000. Male gastroenterologists reported an average salary of $689,000.
When looking strictly at the average salaries overall, our male doctors averaged 32% more than their female colleagues. This is a significantly higher difference than we’ve seen in general across different specialties within our how much doctors make by specialty series, but not dissimilar to other procedure heavy specialties such as surgeons (see our ‘How much do Surgeons Make?’ article for comparison).
We noticed that the top 12 highest reported salaries for gastroenterologists were all by male physicians.
We looked briefly at how the other factors that influence salaries compared between the genders:
Practice Environment: Male gastroenterologists were more likely to work in the hospital setting (67% vs 43% for female gastroenterologists).
Employment Type: Female gastroenterologists were slightly more likely to be owners or partners in this practice (20% vs 18% for male gastroenterologists).
Hours Worked a Week: Male gastroenterologists reported working slightly more a week, reporting an average in the 41-45 hours a week range versus female gastroenterologists in the 36-40 hours range.
Overall, it’s hard to determine why there is such a large gender gap in this specialty, so we look forward to diving in deeper with future data.
How Much Gastroenterologists Make by Practice Environment
We broke down the data by where our members reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Group private practice, non private equity backed - $719,000
Academic hospital employee - $471,000
Non-academic hospital employee - $686,000
Of the practice environments where we had enough (10+) data points to assess an average, the gastroenterologists working in non private equity backed group private practices reported the highest salaries, 5% higher than gastroenterologists working in non-academic hospitals and 53% higher than colleagues working for academic hospitals.
Zooming out at the overall landscape, we noted that 39% of our gastroenterologists worked in private practice and earned average salaries of $645,000, while 59% of our gastroenterologists reported working in a hospital setting and averaged 5% less at $615,000.
One important note is that academic hospitals often qualify for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), 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.
Gastroenterologist Salary by Type of Employment
Salaries often vary significantly based on the type of employment doctors work under.
All our contributing gastroenterologists members reported being either W2 employees or owners/partners in their practice, though it’s important to note that we have a separate locums pay and compensation database that we recommended for this type of employment. You can explore the statistics on locum tenens compensation for doctors separately, where there is much more data about this type of employment.
W2 employees averaged $592,000 a year, while partners and owners in practices averaged 33% higher salaries at $787,000 for 2024. Several of these partners may also have ownership in an ambulatory surgery center (ASC).
The partner or owner track can be a great way to increase your earnings potential in gastroenterology, if you don’t mind the additional administrative roles that accompany the title.
Related PSG resources to explore:
Who Earns the Most in Gastroenterology?
9 of our contributions for gastroenterology were $900,000+ salaries, with 5 of those being in the 7-figures range. Among this group of highest earners, we saw a few common traits:
They were all male physicians
They all either worked as a partner/owner in a non-private equity backed private practice or in a non-academic hospital setting
All are 1 FTE
Gastroenterologist Salary by Location
Our gastroenterologists are spread around the country, so we don’t have average salaries (yet) by state, as we tend to want more data points in each location before commenting on trends. We hope to update this section soon.
Contribute your physician salary and compensation data today to see this section added in the future.
How Much Gastroenterologists 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 gastroenterology physicians.
36-40 hours a week average - $597,000
41-45 hours a week average - $577,000
46-50 hours a week average - $631,000
51+ hours a week average - $713,000
While generally we see that doctors in gastroenterology who work the most make the most, we noted that the group of gastroenterologists who worked 36-40 hours a week on average reported 3% higher salaries than those who averaged 41-45 hours a week. We noted that 3 of the highest paid gastroenterologists fell into the 36-40 hours a week range, which could skew the averages of our smaller data set. This suggests that other factors, such as type of employment and practice environment may weigh into the salary discussion more than hours worked.
How Much Gastroenterologists Work
As well as looking at how much gastroenterologists make by hours worked, we looked at how much gastroenterologists worked on average.
The majority of gastroenterologists work 36-45 hours a week on average.
Along with the average hours worked a week, doctors contributing to our database also indicate how much time they spend charting. 27% of gastroenterologists reported spending at least five hours a week charting at home on top of the hours worked above.
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 Gastroenterologists 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 gastroenterologists over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at gastroenterology doctors 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: $467,000
2020-2021: $462,000
2022-2023: $491,000
2024: $625,000
As with many specialties that include elective procedures, we see a dip in average salaries reported during the COVID-19 pandemic, which shows again how medicine can often be an “eat what you kill” model when it comes to compensation.
We see a 6% increase in average salaries from 2022-2023 versus 2020-2021 and a huge jump for 2024, though we want to caution against drawing too many conclusions as we noted when compiling the data from our previous physician salary and negotiation database that our contributors to the previous database were more likely to be employed in a hospital system versus a partner/owner in a private practice. The type of employment environment can factor heavily into salaries, so while we see a general trend in increasing salaries over time, we caution that differences in who contributed to the datasets with our smaller number of data points in this specialty may heavily factor into the comparison of 2024 versus 2018-2023.
Additional Insights into Gastroenterologist 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 gastroenterologists might find interesting.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses Gastroenterologists Receive
55% of our gastroenterologists reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with the average amount of $31,000. Signing bonuses varied drastically, from $5,000 all the way up to $100,000. Members noted that sign-on bonuses were sometimes treated as retention bonuses and paid out over a multiple year schedule.
Learn more about signing bonuses for physicians.
33% of our gastroenterology doctors reported receiving a moving bonus, with an average of $12,000. Relocation bonuses ranged from $3,000 - $25,000.
Average Vacation Days Gastroenterologists Receive
The average number of annual vacation days gastroenterologists receive was 24 days. The median was 20 days, which shows some of the variations in the data. Members reported as low as three weeks of paid time off and others up to seven weeks.
Some members also noted that their vacation time was pooled into one paid time off bucket with their sick and CME days.
CME Stipends for Gastroenterologists
72% of our gastroenterologists reported receiving some sort of CME stipend. Stipends ranged from $1,000 - $8,000 annually, with an average of $3,500.
Average Student Loan Debt for Gastroenterology
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our gastroenterology doctors who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $267,000. 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 Gastroenterologists
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 looked for additional insights provided by other gastroenterologists that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations. A few that might be of use:
Increasing Your Gastroenterologist Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income in gastroenterology. 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 red flags to watch out for.
If you’re looking to increase your income as a gastroenterologist but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Opportunities to consider include:
Explore more side gigs for gastroenterologists for ways to increase your income.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Gastroenterologists
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 our side gigs for gastroenterologists.