MedicalRecruiting.com is a national physician recruiting firm placing board-certified MDs and DOs into permanent positions across every major specialty and subspecialty. Since 2006 our physician recruiters have partnered with hospitals, health systems, multi-specialty groups, single-specialty practices, FQHCs, academic medical centers, federally qualified health centers, and private equity-backed platforms to source, vet, and hire physicians nationwide — on a contingency-only fee model that means employers pay nothing until a candidate accepts and starts. Our active candidate network spans more than 1.5 million providers across primary care, hospital medicine, emergency medicine, all medical and surgical subspecialties, behavioral health, women's health, and diagnostic and procedural specialties. Whether you need a single hospitalist for a community hospital, a cardiology slate to build out a new cath lab program, or a multi-physician orthopedic group buildout, our physician recruiters bring nearly two decades of specialty depth to every search.
Physician recruiting is fundamentally a specialty-knowledge business. Our physician recruiters are organized by specialty cluster — primary care, hospital-based medicine, surgical, medical subspecialties, behavioral health, and procedural specialties — so the recruiter handling your cardiology search actually understands STEMI call ratios, EP volume expectations, structural heart program economics, and the difference between a true PCI-capable opportunity and a referral-and-medicine-only role. The recruiter handling your psychiatry search understands collaborative care models, IOP / PHP / RTC program structures, and Suboxone-waivered prescribing. The recruiter handling your orthopedic search understands joint replacement vs. spine vs. sports medicine fellowship pathways. That depth is the difference between a slate of resumes and a slate of physicians who will actually accept your offer.
Our placement process begins with a structured intake covering practice model (employed, partnership-track, hospital-employed with PSA, academic), call burden and call coverage rotation, productivity expectations (RVU thresholds, base + bonus structure, quality and citizenship metrics), partnership track and shareholder economics, sign-on, relocation, loan assistance, CME budget, malpractice coverage (occurrence vs. claims-made and tail), EMR, and any visa or J-1 waiver considerations. We translate that into a written search profile our recruiters work against. Within 14-21 days our physician recruiters deliver a curated slate of board-eligible or board-certified candidates whose practice interests, geography, family considerations, and compensation expectations match the role.
After the slate is delivered our physician recruiters manage every downstream step: CV review, interview coordination (site visits, second-look visits, spousal touring), structured interview feedback collection, reference checks with prior chiefs and program directors, contract negotiation, credentialing handoff to the medical staff office, payor enrollment timing, and onboarding through the physician's start date. We also handle the harder moments — counter-offers from current employers, competing opportunities, family relocation hesitations, partner-employment needs — so nothing surprises the employer in the final weeks before signing. Every placement carries a 90-day replacement guarantee: if a placed physician departs within 90 days, we re-run the search at no additional fee.
Every physician placement is backed by a contingency fee — billed only when the physician starts. No retainers, no upfront fees, no per-search charges, no monthly minimums. Pricing is custom-built per search based on specialty, geography, and search difficulty — request a quote at /contact and our team will send a tailored proposal within one business day. For employers running multiple concurrent physician searches or building out a new service line, we offer volume discounts, exclusive search agreements with rebates, and dedicated principal recruiter assignment. Our model aligns our incentives directly with employer outcomes: we get paid when you hire, not when we send a resume. That structure also means employers can engage our physician recruiters with zero upfront financial risk and evaluate our pipeline against any incumbent firm or internal in-house recruiter head-to-head.
Our physician recruiters operate on a contingency-fee model — billed only when the placed physician accepts an offer and starts in the role. There are no upfront fees, no retainers, no monthly minimums, and no charge for candidates who don't get hired. Pricing is built per search based on specialty, geography, and seniority: high-volume primary care and hospitalist searches sit at the lower end of our range, while subspecialty searches in cardiology, neurosurgery, gastroenterology, child & adolescent psychiatry, MFM, and REI sit at the upper end given the smaller candidate pool and longer search cycles. Request a quote at /contact and our team will send a tailored proposal within one business day. For employers running multiple concurrent physician searches we offer volume pricing, exclusive search rebates, and a 90-day replacement guarantee on every placement at no additional cost.
Average time-to-fill depends on specialty, geography, and the comprehensiveness of the offer package. Primary care and hospitalist roles in metro markets typically fill in 60-90 days from intake call to signed offer. Subspecialty searches — interventional cardiology, electrophysiology, neurosurgery, gastroenterology, surgical oncology, child & adolescent psychiatry, MFM, REI — typically run 90-150 days due to limited candidate pools, fellowship-pipeline timing, and 90-180 day notice periods at current employers. Rural and underserved markets, J-1 waiver positions, and academic appointments typically add 30-60 days to the cycle. Our physician recruiters deliver weekly pipeline updates with active candidates, interview status, and offers in flight, so employers always know exactly where every search stands.
We recruit across every physician specialty and subspecialty in the United States: primary care (Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Med-Peds, Geriatrics), hospital medicine (hospitalist, nocturnist, OB hospitalist, surgical hospitalist), emergency medicine and pediatric emergency medicine, psychiatry and behavioral health (general adult, child & adolescent, addiction medicine, geriatric, telepsychiatry), all medical subspecialties (cardiology including interventional and EP, gastroenterology, endocrinology, nephrology, pulmonology and critical care, rheumatology, hematology/oncology, infectious disease), all surgical specialties (general, orthopedic, neurosurgery, vascular, cardiothoracic, plastic, bariatric, trauma, surgical oncology), OB/GYN and women's health subspecialties (MFM, REI, gynecologic oncology), and diagnostic and procedural specialties (radiology including IR, neuroradiology, breast; anesthesiology, pathology, dermatology, ophthalmology, urology, otolaryngology / ENT).
Yes — telehealth physician placement is a rapidly growing segment of our practice, particularly for psychiatry (telepsychiatry, virtual addiction medicine), primary care, dermatology (teledermatology), endocrinology (especially for diabetes and obesity-medicine programs), and tele-stroke neurology. We maintain an active candidate pool of physicians with multi-state licensure (including IMLC compact licenses), asynchronous chronic-care experience, and direct-to-consumer telehealth platform familiarity for both employed W-2 and 1099 contractor models. We work with the major DTC telehealth platforms, payer-driven virtual care lines, and traditional health systems building hybrid in-person/virtual physician panels.
Physician recruiters — like MedicalRecruiting.com — focus on permanent direct-hire placement with deep specialty matching, contract negotiation, and long-term cultural and partnership-track fit. The placed physician becomes a W-2 (or shareholder/partnership-track) employee of the hiring organization, with the recruiter paid a one-time contingency fee at start. Locum tenens agencies provide short-term contract coverage to bridge vacancies, leaves of absence, parental leave, sabbaticals, or seasonal demand spikes; the physician remains an agency contractor or 1099 and the agency bills the employer an ongoing daily rate, plus travel and malpractice. Most healthcare employers ultimately need both, but they are distinct services with very different fee structures, different candidate pools, different credentialing workflows, and different downstream cost profiles.
Yes. Every physician placement carries a 90-day replacement guarantee at no additional fee. If a placed physician departs voluntarily, is terminated for cause, or fails credentialing within 90 days of their start date, our physician recruiters re-run the entire search — fresh slate, new candidate pipeline, no second invoice. We track guarantee invocations transparently and report them as part of our quarterly client business reviews. Longer guarantees (180-day, 12-month) are available on retained and exclusive engagements, and on subspecialty searches where the typical onboarding ramp exceeds 90 days.
Yes — J-1 visa waiver placements (typically through the Conrad 30 program, HHS, ARC, Delta Regional Authority, or VA pathways) and H-1B physician placements are a meaningful share of our annual volume, particularly in primary care, hospital medicine, psychiatry, and medical subspecialties in HRSA-designated HPSA and MUA/MUP shortage areas. Our physician recruiters work with employer immigration counsel on cap-exempt vs. cap-subject H-1B filings, J-1 waiver state allocation timing, public-interest waivers, the typical 30-month and 3-year service obligations, and the credentialing implications of J-1 waiver employment contracts. Flag visa requirements on intake so we can scope the candidate pool, employer sponsorship readiness, and realistic time-to-fill before the search opens.
Our physician recruiters provide market-rate compensation benchmarking against MGMA, AMGA, Sullivan Cotter, and our own placement data — including base salary by specialty and geography, wRVU thresholds and conversion factors, quality and citizenship bonus structures, sign-on and relocation ranges, loan-repayment norms, partnership buy-in/buy-out structures, ancillary income participation, call stipends, and tail-coverage handling. We coach physicians through offer evaluation and counter-offer framing, and we coach employers on offer competitiveness, package structure, and where flexibility produces the strongest accept-rate lift. We do not provide tax, legal, or financial advice — final contract review should always be done by independent physician contract counsel.
Our physician recruiters work an internal proprietary database of more than 800,000 physicians built over nearly two decades, supplemented by AMA Physician Masterfile data, ABMS board-certification directories, state medical-board licensure registries, fellowship and residency program alumni networks, specialty society membership lists (ACC, ASCO, ASA, APA, AAOS, ACOG, and others by specialty), and direct name-generation outreach to physicians at peer institutions. Roughly 75% of placements come from candidates already in our database or surfaced through existing relationships; the remaining 25% come from targeted name generation and referrals from previously placed physicians. We do not rely on job-board volume — passive physician candidates and referral pipelines consistently outperform application-driven sourcing on both quality and acceptance rate.
Last reviewed: May 7, 2026 by the MedicalRecruiting.com editorial team. Content is reviewed and updated regularly to reflect current healthcare recruiting market conditions, fee structures, and regulatory changes.