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. Rheumatologists need transparency about what the average compensation data is for rheumatology, 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 aggregate 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, this series on compensation data by specialty assesses aggregate data from our physician salary and compensation database provided by physicians across the country.
Disclaimers/Disclosures: This page contains information about our sponsors and/or affiliate links, which support us monetarily at no cost to you. These should be viewed as introductions rather than formal recommendations. 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 Rheumatology Aggregate Stats Were Determined
The data for rheumatologists below was compiled using data points anonymously contributed to our database between late-2023 and late-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 56 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. A local physician employment contract review attorney can also help you assess what current market trends are in your area.
Unless otherwise noted, the average salary stats below are for full-time attending rheumatologists, 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 anonymous physician salary and compensation data to help others in your specialty.
How Much Does a Rheumatologist Make?
The average annual salary across all of our contributing rheumatologists was $278,000, including physicians practicing part time and full time (and those who did not specify). The median overall reported salary was $250,000.
Since part-time salaries can heavily influence the average depending on how many hours are worked, we also break our dataset down by full-time versus part-time rheumatologists.
Average Full-Time Rheumatologist Salary
The average salary for full-time rheumatologists was $288,000. A few extra stats:
The highest reported salary was $600,000
The lowest reported salary was $191,000
The median full-time salary was $256,000
Average Part-Time Rheumatologist Salary
Rheumatologists in our physician online community who worked less than 36 hours a week on average reported working anywhere from 21-35 hours a week on average. Three of these data points were clear outliers with higher than normal earnings, of which two indicated that they were private practice owners. These three data points were omitted from the averages as they were such large outliers and at least two of them likely had other ancillary income related to practice ownership that was skewing their compensation.
The average salary for part-time rheumatologists working 21-35 hours a week was $234,000.
How Much Rheumatologists Make by Practice Environment
While we don’t have enough data to aggregate an average for every practice environment, we assessed trends compared to the average.
Corporate groups: Physicians in this practice environment reported higher than average salaries. One of our highest reported salaries was from a physician who worked for a corporate group.
Government (VA, city hospital, etc.): Our physicians who work at government facilities all reported lower than average salaries, which is a trend that has been common across our how much doctors make by specialty series.
Group private practices: Generally our rheumatologists working for group private practices reported higher than average salaries.
Academic hospitals: $230,000 average salary
Nonacademic hospitals: $294,000 average salary
Solo private practice: We only had a few solo private practice contributors, which were both above and below average. We noted that solo practitioners who reported lower than average salaries were in their early years out from training and likely had just started their practice and were still building their patient rosters. Solo private practice owners with several years of experience reported some of our highest average salaries.
Our rheumatologists who work for nonacademic hospitals reported 28% higher average salaries than colleagues working for academic hospitals.
When looking at differences by practice environment, we like to remind doctors that salary is only one component of the overall compensation package. Certain practice environments such as government facilities and academic hospitals, for instance, often offer lower salaries, but they typically include other incentives, such as pensions and/or retirement benefits and eligibility for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) programs.
Rheumatologist Salary by Type of Employment
Along with gender and practice environment, we also like to look at how the type of employment influences average salaries. The majority (87%) of our rheumatologists who contributed are W2 employees, so we don’t have enough data to provide averages, but we looked at trends among the different types of employment.
Partners/owners in private practices reported higher than average salaries, even though many work less than 36 hours a week on average. In fact, many of our partners/owners reported some of the highest salaries for the year.
Explore private practice with:
How Much Rheumatologists Make 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 by our rheumatologists.
21-30 hours a week: $247,000
31-40 hours a week: $307,000
41-50 hours a week: $267,000
Interestingly, we saw that the physicians who worked the most actually made less, though we’d like to remind you that this is a small dataset, so outliers can heavily skew averages. Additionally, most of our private practice owners fell into the 31-40 hours per week category, and some of them had the highest reported earnings. The vast majority of the rheumatologists in the 41-50 hour range worked for hospital systems or government entities. Explore trends in our article on how many hours a week doctors work by practice environment and specialty.
Other factors, such as the average number of patients seen an hour, can also heavily influence how much physicians make on RVU-based compensation models. Explore the average number of patients seen an hour by specialty.
How Much Rheumatologists Work
When we look at salaries by hours worked, we also like to look at how much, on average, doctors in different specialties work.
The majority of our rheumatologists reported working 31-40 hours a week on average.
Rheumatologists contributing to our physician salary and compensation database can include how many hours a week they spend charting at home. While the majority of rheumatologists reported spending less than 5 hours a week charting, 27% reported spending 5+ hours additional on charting on top of the hours reported in the graphic above.
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. A course on charting efficiency may also be able to help. You can check out our career support resources for doctors for perks on both if either might be useful!
Additional Insights into Rheumatologist Compensation Packages
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses Rheumatologists Receive
30% of rheumatologists reported receiving some sort of sign-on bonus, with an average amount of $37,000. Signing bonuses ranged from $10,000 all the way up to $100,000.
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23% of rheumatologists reported receiving a relocation bonus, with an average of $11,000. Moving bonuses ranged from $2,000 to $25,000.
Average Vacation Days Rheumatologists Receive
The average number of annual vacation days rheumatologists received was 21 days. The median was 20 days. Reported vacation time ranged anywhere from 3 weeks to 6 1/2 weeks.
Some rheumatologists mentioned that they had unlimited time off, but that it was unpaid because they were compensated by productivity. Others mentioned that they had one common pool of time off including sick days, CME days, holidays, etc.
CME Stipends for Rheumatologists
61% of our rheumatologists reported receiving some sort of CME stipend. The average CME stipend was $3,700. Reported stipends ranged anywhere from $1,000 - $8,000.
Average Student Loan Debt for Rheumatology
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our rheumatologists who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $205,000. 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.
Increasing Your Rheumatologist Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income in rheumatology. 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, like we mentioned above. 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 rheumatology but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Opportunity to consider include:
Explore other side gigs for rheumatologists.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Rheumatologists
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?
If you need guidance on negotiating your next contract for the best possible deal, check out:
Also check out our popular medical and nonmedical side gigs for doctors.