MedicalRecruiting.com runs dedicated specialty recruiting practices across every major physician, nurse practitioner, and physician assistant specialty in the United States. Since 2006 our medical recruiters have placed clinicians into more than 600 distinct specialty and subspecialty roles — primary care, hospital medicine, every medical and surgical subspecialty, behavioral health, women's health, diagnostic and procedural specialties, and the rapidly expanding list of advanced practice subspecialties (PMHNP, ACNP, FNP-C, AGNP-C, surgical PA, EM PA). Each specialty practice is staffed by recruiters who work that specialty exclusively, maintain a current candidate pipeline, and understand the operational, compensation, and clinical specifics that differ from one specialty to the next. This page is the entry point to our specialty network — use it to find the dedicated recruiter for your specialty, see how recruiting differs by specialty, and understand the candidate market and salary range for the role you are searching.
Our specialty coverage is organized into clusters that share clinical, operational, and compensation patterns. Primary care covers family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and geriatrics. Hospital medicine covers adult hospitalists, pediatric hospitalists, OB hospitalists, and nocturnists. Surgical specialties cover general surgery and every surgical subspecialty from orthopedics and ENT to cardiothoracic, vascular, and complex spine. Medical subspecialties cover cardiology, gastroenterology, pulmonology/critical care, nephrology, endocrinology, rheumatology, hematology/oncology, infectious disease, and allergy/immunology. Behavioral health covers adult psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, addiction medicine, geriatric psychiatry, and PMHNP. Women's health covers OB/GYN, MFM, REI, and gynecologic oncology. Diagnostic and procedural specialties cover radiology, anesthesiology, pathology, and emergency medicine.
Within each cluster, a principal recruiter owns the candidate pipeline and the employer relationships. That recruiter is the same person you speak to from intake through offer signing — there is no hand-off between business development and search execution, and there is no junior recruiter staffing your search while a senior name appears on the engagement letter. The recruiter handling your search has personally vetted every candidate they present and has working relationships with employers in your geography that go back years.
Our candidate database carries more than 1.5 million credentialed providers nationally, with depth that varies by specialty: primary care, hospital medicine, EM, and most medical subspecialties have very deep candidate pools; surgical subspecialties (CT surgery, complex spine, transplant, MFM, REI, pediatric subspecialties at children's hospitals) have thin pools that require active off-market sourcing. Our specialty recruiters know which model fits which search and engage accordingly — high-volume specialties run on open contingency, thin-market subspecialties often run on exclusive contingency or retained.
Hospitalist recruiting is a high-volume, fast-moving game. Candidate pools are deep, time-to-fill is predictable (typically 30 to 60 days from intake to offer signed), and the dominant compensation model is shift-based with productivity overlays. The recruiter handling your hospitalist search is running 8 to 12 concurrent searches and presenting fresh candidates every week. Cardiology recruiting is the opposite — candidate pools are smaller, partnership-track and call-coverage structure are dominant negotiation points, and the recruiter is often working a single search for 90 to 180 days because the right cardiologist may need to be sourced off-market from a current employer.
Primary care (family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics) is the largest single recruiting category by volume, with strong candidate pools in metros and very thin pools in rural and frontier markets. Outpatient comp models dominate (base + wRVU + quality), and partnership-track community practices command different recruiter strategy than hospital-employed, salary-and-bonus models. Emergency medicine recruiting is shift-based, contract-coverage-heavy, and often runs through democratic groups, hospital-employed, or staffing companies — each with different fee structures and different candidate expectations.
Behavioral health, particularly psychiatry and PMHNP, has the most acute candidate scarcity in the country relative to demand. Compensation has risen dramatically (with PMHNP base salaries now routinely $135K-$170K and adult psychiatry hospital roles $325K-$400K base), and tele-mental health has created a national candidate market that local employers must compete with. Women's health recruiting (OB/GYN, MFM, REI) requires careful attention to call ratios, surgical mix, and partnership structure — every detail of which a generalist recruiter is unlikely to capture without a specialty practice behind them.
Salary ranges below reflect first-year guaranteed compensation for board-certified physicians and credentialed advanced practice providers in U.S. metro and mid-market geographies. Rural and frontier-market premiums are common; subspecialty fellowship completion and procedural mix can drive significant variance within each range.
Primary care: family medicine $240K-$310K, internal medicine $250K-$320K, pediatrics $215K-$275K, geriatrics $230K-$285K. Hospital medicine: adult hospitalist $290K-$355K, nocturnist $310K-$385K, pediatric hospitalist $230K-$285K. Emergency medicine: $325K-$420K depending on hours and group structure. Surgical: general surgery $400K-$525K, orthopedics $550K-$750K, cardiothoracic $625K-$925K, neurosurgery $650K-$1.1M, urology $475K-$625K. Medical subspecialties: cardiology $475K-$725K, GI $475K-$650K, pulmonary/critical care $385K-$525K, hematology/oncology $400K-$575K, endocrinology $260K-$340K, nephrology $290K-$385K, rheumatology $260K-$335K. Behavioral health: adult psychiatry $310K-$400K, child & adolescent psychiatry $325K-$425K. Women's health: OB/GYN $315K-$425K, MFM $400K-$525K, REI $350K-$525K. Diagnostic: radiology $475K-$650K, anesthesiology $400K-$525K, pathology $325K-$425K. Advanced practice: NP base $115K-$175K depending on specialty, PA base $115K-$165K depending on specialty.
These ranges are baseline first-year guarantees — total compensation for established physicians (year three onward) is typically 15-35% higher when productivity bonuses, partnership distributions, and call premiums are included. For more granular benchmarks by specialty and geography, see our Physician Salary Comparison resource and the dedicated specialty pages linked below.
Demand for physicians has been structurally tight for two decades and is now intensifying. The AAMC projects a national physician shortage of 86,000 to 124,000 by 2034, driven by aging demographics, retiring physicians (40% of the active physician workforce is over age 55), and slow growth in residency training capacity. Behavioral health, primary care, and the surgical subspecialties (orthopedics, urology, cardiothoracic) are the most acutely undersupplied specialties nationally.
Advanced practice (NP and PA) workforce growth has helped fill some of the gap, particularly in primary care and hospital medicine, but APP growth is itself constrained by clinical training capacity and by state-by-state variation in scope-of-practice law. Full practice authority states see significantly higher NP demand and significantly higher NP compensation than restricted-practice states.
Geographic concentration of physicians in coastal metros has created severe shortage in the Mountain West, the rural South, and rural Midwest — markets where MedicalRecruiting.com places significant recruiting effort and where employer signing bonuses, loan repayment, and partnership tracks have escalated dramatically. For employers, demand intensification means recruiting timelines are longer than they were 10 years ago and signing bonuses are larger; for candidates, it means more leverage in compensation negotiation than at any point in the past two decades.
Each specialty link below routes to the dedicated specialty page with current job openings, salary benchmarks, and the principal recruiter for that specialty. If your specialty is not listed, visit the recruiter overview pages for physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants — we cover every specialty, even where a dedicated landing page is not yet published.
Specialty recruiters maintain a continuously curated candidate pipeline within a single specialty cluster, understand the operational and compensation specifics of that specialty (call ratios, partnership-track conventions, productivity benchmarks, common credentialing hurdles), and have working relationships with employers in that specialty going back years. A generalist recruiter sourcing a cardiology candidate from scratch will spend twice as long, present half as many qualified candidates, and miss key negotiation points. For specialty searches, a specialty recruiter is materially more effective.
Yes. MedicalRecruiting.com covers every recognized physician, nurse practitioner, and physician assistant specialty and subspecialty in the United States — more than 600 specialty and subspecialty roles in total. If a specialty is not listed on the browse list above, the dedicated recruiter for that specialty is still available; contact us and we will route the search to the appropriate principal recruiter.
Time-to-fill varies dramatically by specialty. High-volume specialties with deep candidate pools (hospitalist, family medicine, EM, urgent care) typically fill in 30 to 60 days. Mid-volume specialties (general OB/GYN, general surgery, primary IM, dermatology) typically fill in 60 to 120 days. Thin-market subspecialties (interventional cardiology in tertiary markets, MFM, REI, complex spine, transplant surgery, child & adolescent psychiatry in rural markets) routinely take 4 to 9 months and may require off-market sourcing.
Compensation expectations are set against MGMA, AMGA, and Sullivan Cotter benchmarks for that specialty in that geography, adjusted for practice type (hospital-employed vs. private vs. PE-backed), call structure, and partnership terms. Our specialty recruiters work to those benchmarks every day and will provide a written compensation range for any specific search at the intake stage. For candidate-side benchmarking, see our Physician Salary Comparison resource.
Yes — for healthcare employers running multiple concurrent specialty searches, we typically assign one principal account recruiter who coordinates across the specialty clusters and pulls in the dedicated specialty recruiters on each individual search. This gives the employer one single point of contact while preserving the depth of specialty recruiter expertise on every search. Volume employers also receive volume pricing on the contingency fee structure.