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. Physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) doctors need salary transparency about what the average physiatrist 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.
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 Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) Aggregate Stats Were Determined
The data for PM&R doctors below was compiled using 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 83 contributions available. Smaller datasets may be less representative of the overall landscape of the specialty. As such, we remind you to access the full free doctor salary and negotiation database to compare your situation to relevant data.
Unless otherwise noted, the stats below are for full-time attending physiatrists, determined based on a full-time equivalency of an average 36+ hours worked a week. We excluded data contributed by residents and fellows.
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 Physiatrist Make in 2024?
The average annual salary across all of our contributing physiatrists for 2024 was $355,000, including doctors practicing 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 Physiatrist Salary for 2024
The average salary for a full-time physiatrist for 2024 was $364,000. To give you an idea on the range of salaries around this average, a few extra stats:
The highest reported salary was $736,000 a year.
The lowest reported salary was $200,000 a year.
The median salary was $325,000.
Our top two highest reported salaries both came from doctors who were owners or partners in their practice. We also assess below how employment type influences salaries in physiatry.
Average Part-Time PM&R Doctor Salary for 2024
To assess a part-time average, we looked at attending PM&R doctors who reported working 16-35 hours a week.
The average part-time physiatrist salary for 2024 was $315,000.
How Much Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Physicians Make by Specialization
Since specialization can pay heavily into salary, we looked at the average salary breakdown by specialization.
Average Brain Injury Medicine Salary
While we don’t have enough data points to provide an average salary for this specialty yet, we noted that all current contributions are below the average for PM&R.
Average Pediatric Physiatrist Salary
We also didn’t have enough data to provide an average for pediatric physiatrists yet, but could also see from the current dataset that all pediatric contributions were below the overall average.
Average Pain Management Doctor Salary
We’ve previously covered how much pain management doctors make, but wanted to look at the subset from PM&R specifically. This specialty was the most common we saw within physiatry.
The average pain management physiatrist salary for 2024 was $439,000. This is 8% higher than the overall average for non-anesthesiology pain management doctors and significantly higher (21% more) than the average across PM&R.
Reported salaries ranged from $250,000 to $736,000 (our highest reported salary), with a median of $400,000.
Physiatrist Salary by Gender
We also looked at what our female doctors averaged in earnings compared to their male counterparts.
Female PM&R physicians reported an average salary of $329,000. Male PM&R doctors reported 25% higher earnings with an average salary of $411,000.
When we looked at the data a little closer, we noted that six of the eight contributions over $500,000 were reported by men, though the highest reported salary was by a female physician. We also noted that women were much more likely to work for government facilities such as the VA or city hospitals, while men were much more likely to work for a group private practice. As we’ll see below, the practice environment can heavily influence average salaries for physiatrists.
How Much PM&R Doctors Make by Practice Environment
We next broke down the data by where our members reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Government (VA, city hospital, etc.): $274,000
Group private practices (private equity and non-private equity backed): $454,000
Hospital, academic: $296,000
Hospital, non-academic: $434,000
Overall, we see that PM&R doctors working in government facilities such as for the VA and city hospitals averaged the lowest salaries. They made 8% less than academic hospital employees, 58% less than those at non-academic hospitals, and 66% less than those at group private practices. It’s important to note, however, that these positions often qualify for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or have better retirement benefits, 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.
Physiatrists at non-academic hospitals averaged 47% more than colleagues working for academic hospitals, but again, we’ll note that positions at academic hospitals also often qualify for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
PM&R physicians working in group private practices averaged the highest salaries. Many of these reported being an owner or partner in their practice, which can influence potential earnings, as we explore below.
We don’t currently have enough data to assess an average for physiatrists running a solo private practice, but from the data we currently have, we noted that generally, they make more than the average across all PM&R doctors.
Physiatry Salary by Type of Employment
15% of our full-time physiatrists reported being an owner or partner within a private practice. These doctors reported an average salary of $482,000 while W2 employed reported an average 40% less of $345,000.
Of the factors influencing salary we’ve evaluated so far, type of employment has one of the largest impacts. If you are looking to grow your career and earnings potential in physical medicine and rehabilitation, a partnership track or owning your own practice can be a great way to achieve this goal.
We are firm believers in physicians making the life in medicine that fits their life and goals. If private practice ownership interests you, explore related PSG resources:
We also have 1099 independent contractors who contributed to our database, but we don’t currently have enough data to assess an average yet. For those of you that are curious, you can explore whether you should choose to be paid as a W2 or 1099 physician.
Physicians interested in locums statistics can also check out our separate locums compensation database and corresponding statistics on locum tenens compensation for doctors.
Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Physician Salary by Location
Our PM&R doctors are spread around the country, so we don’t have many average salaries (yet) by state. We do, however had a few we can compare so far:
California: $327,000 a year
New York: $311,000 a year
Texas: $416,000 a year
While we’d like more data before drawing any conclusive observations, we’ve seen throughout our how much doctors make series that opportunities can exist for physicians to geoarbitrage their situation if they are willing to potentially move. Assessing different salary options across the country and comparing them to the cost of living can help in this situation. Just make sure you know what is included in cost of living comparisons. For example, city and local taxes are often excluded and can be significant.
How Much Physiatrists 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 physiatrists.
21-35 hours a week - $315,000
36-40 hours a week - $374,000
41-45 hours a week - $370,000
46-50 hours a week - $359,000
51+ hours a week - $345,000
Interestingly, we do not see the same trend in salaries by hours worked that we’ve seen across other specialties. We noted that many PM&R doctors have RVU based contracts, which typically leads to higher salaries for more hours worked, but we didn’t see that trend follow in this case. While we often at least see a general trend of increasing salaries, they are much more scattered for our current PM&R dataset.
This may suggest that other factors more heavily influence salaries for physiatry. We are certainly curious to see if a trend emerges as we receive more data. You can also explore more specific details on how PM&R RVU contracts are structured with our full, free physician salary and compensation data.
How Much PM&R Doctors Work
The majority of PM&R doctors work 36-45 hours a week.
We also like to look at how much time doctors report charting from home on top of their work week, as it can significantly add to the workload. 29% of physiatrists reported spending an additional 5+ hours a week charting at home. As we noted in our article on the average salary for pain management doctors, we didn’t have many pain management specialists in this group of doctors who chart a lot at home. Unfortunately, however, the trend wasn’t the same across all PM&R specialties.
If you find yourself spending a lot of time 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 Physiatry 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 physical medicine & rehabilitation doctors over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at PM&R physicians 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.
2018-2020: $283,000
2021-2023: $318,000 (12% increase)
2024: 364,000 (14% increase)
While we don’t have enough data to break down salary increases by specific year, we can see increasing salaries over time by looking at ranges. We hope to see this trend continue with increased salary transparency for physicians.
Additional Insights into Physiatrist Compensation Packages
Since salary is only one component of an overall employment package, we also like to look at trends in other parts of compensation.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses PM&R Doctors Receive
37% of physiatrists reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with an average amount of $29,000. Signing bonuses varied anywhere from $5,000 all the way to $100,000.
We’re starting to hear of a trend of rising signing bonuses across specialties, so we looked at bonuses in 2023 versus 2024. While the average amount was around the same, we did notice that the highest reported sign-on bonus for 2023 was much less at only $75,000. We also noticed that more people reported receiving signing bonuses in 2024 (41%) versus 2023 (24%). While providing this information isn’t required when physicians contribute their data, it’s a statistic of interest, and we look forward to tracking future trends as well.
Learn more about signing bonuses for physicians.
30% of our physiatrists reported receiving a relocation bonus, with an average of $13,000. Moving bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $60,000.
Average Vacation Days Physiatrists Receive
The average number of annual vacation days physiatrists received was 23 days. The median number of days was 21. Reported vacation time varied anywhere from two to eight weeks.
Some doctors mentioned they had “unlimited” time off, but often in this situation, they are only paid for the days or shifts they work. So while it may be vacation days, it usually isn’t paid time off with unlimited vacation.
CME Stipends for PM&R Doctors
71% of our PM&R doctors reported receiving some sort of CME stipend. Stipends ranged from $1,000 - $7,500 annually, with an average of $3,300.
Average Student Loan Debt for Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our physical medicine and rehabilitation doctors who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $228,000. 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 PM&R 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 looked for additional insights provided by other PM&R physicians that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations. A few that might be of use:
Increasing Your Physiatrist Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income in PM&R. But a reminder first 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 in physiatry but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Opportunities to consider include:
Consulting, including consulting for pharmaceutical companies and being a startup advisor
Running a pain clinic
Offering concierge services
Providing outpatient physician therapy/rehab services
Explore more side gigs for PM&R doctors.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Physiatrists
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 popular medical and nonmedical side gigs for doctors.