SullivanCotter, the nation’s leading independent consulting firm in the assessment and development of total rewards programs, workforce solutions, and data products for health care and not-for-profits, has released new data and benchmarks from its 2026 Physician Compensation and Productivity Survey.
This year, median physician total cash compensation (TCC) rose year-over-year across all major specialty categories. Adult medical specialties again posted the largest increase, up 7.2% from 2025 to 2026 for a cumulative gain of 25.2% over the past five years. Work RVU (wRVU) productivity increases were modest, with year-over-year changes ranging from 0.8% in primary care to 2.8% in adult medical specialties. This is the second consecutive year in which adult medical specialties have shown the highest growth in productivity.
Sharp TCC growth over the past few years in anesthesiology and radiology has markedly shifted employment models and driven consolidation among private practice groups whose reimbursement has not kept pace with the TCC demands of new recruits in the field. TCC for general, cardiac, and pediatric anesthesiology has grown 14-16% since 2024, while CRNA pay has grown almost 12%. Over the same period, TCC for diagnostic, interventional, and mammography radiology has grown between 12% and 18%.
Facing these TCC increases and continued market pressure to reduce annual work effort expectations, many organizations are evaluating the design of their compensation programs. “As physician shortages persist and the implementation of AI tools alters care delivery, health care organizations must have agile compensation and care model strategies,” said Courtney Dutton, Managing Director and Clinical Workforce Services Leader, SullivanCotter.
The 2026 survey findings show that base salary and wRVU productivity remain the most prevalent components of compensation plans for primary care, medical, and surgical specialties. As for physician incentive pay, individual productivity and patient experience remain the most common measures, each used by 73% of responding organizations. Clinical outcome measures saw the biggest shift, rising 8% from 2025 to 2026 to a prevalence of 55%, continuing a multi-year climb impacting physician incentive design.
Sign-on bonuses are becoming table stakes in an increasingly competitive market. The number of physicians receiving sign-on bonuses reached nearly 95% in 2026. Looking for other differentiators, 49% of respondent organizations offer student loan repayment programs. For many new physicians, financial security and work-life balance outweigh the risks and variability of incentive-focused models.
“Nearly 65% of survey participants plan to increase the size of their physician workforce in the next year. These organizations are caught between forces pulling in opposite directions: pressure to keep pace on compensation, while recruits are increasingly prioritizing flexibility. Recruitment incentives that used to be reserved for hard-to-fill specialties are now standard practice almost everywhere,” said Ted Tackett, Principal, SullivanCotter.
Regulatory change also remains a defining factor for the year ahead. The 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule raised the conversion factor for the first time in six years, but CMS offset much of that gain with a 2.5% efficiency adjustment that reduced wRVU values for nearly 7,000 non-time-based CPT codes. This adjustment is set to recur every three years.
Looking ahead to 2027, CMS has proposed reducing the conversion factor by 1.2% for CMS Advanced Alternative Payment Model (APM) participants and 1.7% for non-APM participants, shifting the G2211 add-on code to a percentage-based modifier, cutting overlapping payments for same-day E&M and global surgery by 50%, and unbundling the maternity care global code into separate antepartum, labor, delivery, and postpartum codes. CMS has also opened a request for information on alternatives to the AMA’s CPT-4 coding system, signaling that the coding framework underlying physician payment could look different moving forward.
About the Survey
SullivanCotter’s data represents the largest and most comprehensive physician compensation benchmarking resource for health systems and hospitals nationwide. This year’s report includes data from 575 health care organizations representing approximately 235,000 physicians across 240 specialties. This represents nearly 4,000 additional physician records reported since the 2025 survey.
About SullivanCotter
SullivanCotter is the leading independent consulting firm serving health care and mission-driven organizations. Through industry-leading workforce intelligence and specialized advisory expertise, we help organizations assess their workforce, improve organizational structure, align compensation, benefits, and rewards, and accelerate workforce and organizational performance. By integrating data analytics, behavioral science, and deep industry insight, we align strategy with structure and reimagine the definition of partnership—working alongside leaders to architect the future of health care and build organizations better equipped to serve their communities.
For more information on SullivanCotter’s surveys, please visit our website at www.sullivancotter.com or contact us via email or by phone at 888.739.7039.
Note to media: Additional data and interviews are available on request.
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