Merritt Hawkins, a national physician recruitment and healthcare consulting firm, provided the most recruited medical specialties in its "2020 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives and the Impact of COVID-19."
Here is the annual compensation for the top 15 specialties on the list, based on data from Medscape's 2021 "Physician Compensation Report."
Note: Compensation for nurse practitioners, physician assistants and certified registered nurse anesthetists was taken from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hospitalist compensation is from Medscape's 2020 "Hospitalist Compensation Report."
Family medicine: $236,000
Nurse practitioner: $114,510
Psychiatry: $275,000
Radiology: $413,000
Internal medicine: $248,000
OB-GYN: $312,000
Cardiology: $459,000
Oncology: $403,000*
Physician assistant: $116,080
Anesthesiology: $378,000
Hospitalist: $267,000
Certified registered nurse anesthetists: $189,190
Gastroenterology: $406,000
Neurology: $290,000
Orthopedic surgery: $511,000
*Merritt Hawkins combined oncology and hematology for its ranking; however, hematologist salary data was unavailable.