For most of the past decade, health systems have treated a bigger salary offer as the best way to win a physician search, but new survey data suggests that approach is running into a ceiling physicians themselves are setting.
CHG Healthcare’s 2025 Physician Sentiment Survey, drawn from more than 900 practicing physicians nationwide, found 91% of respondents call autonomy very or extremely important to their satisfaction, but only 59% are satisfied with the autonomy they actually have. Compensation showed a nearly identical gap: 87% rated it as critical, but only 53% are satisfied with what they receive.
The two gaps, side by side, point to the same conclusion — physicians aren’t measuring job satisfaction in dollars alone, and hospitals that measure their offers that way are missing the real negotiation.
Data from Jordan Search Consultants found the pattern already playing out inside recruitment departments. Across five major health systems profiled, none cited salary increases as their primary recruitment lever. Instead, leaders pointed to flexible scheduling, reduced administrative burden and transparent communication from leadership as the differentiators that closed searches.
Boston-based Tufts Medical Center is one of the systems rebuilding its employment model around that premise. Erika Werner, MD, president of the hospital’s physician organization, said the goal is giving clinicians room to adjust both sides of the equation rather than negotiating salary in isolation.
“We are evolving our employment model so that clinicians can titrate time and compensation to best fit their individual needs,” Dr. Werner told Becker’s. “Only with partnership, transparency and flexibility can we meet workforce and financial demands of 2026 and beyond.”
The shift is showing up in what health systems are willing to spend outside of salary, too. A March survey of 360 independent practice leaders conducted by Veradigm found 65% of physicians spend at least an hour a day on documentation outside of scheduled patient visits, and more than a quarter spend two hours or more. For many physicians, an offer that reduces that burden functions as a raise, even if the base salary line doesn’t move.
That doesn’t mean compensation has stopped mattering, or that systems have stopped competing on it. John Deledda, MD, chief medical officer of Henry Ford Medical Group, part of Detroit-based Henry Ford Health, said pay escalation is still very real in specialties facing acute shortages — and that it’s often a symptom of systems solving the wrong problem.
“What ends up happening is organizations in the same geography start competing against each other, offering higher and higher rates, and physicians jump from system to system chasing compensation,” Dr. Deledda said. “Competing organizations are not sitting down locally and saying, ‘The cost of healthcare in our geography is getting out of hand — we need to do something about this together.’”
The generational divide adds another layer. SullivanCotter’s workforce data shows younger physicians increasingly favor a secure base salary over the productivity-based upside that has driven physician pay models for decades.
“Often younger physicians don’t want to be at risk relative to production or the amount of volume they can generate,” said Mark Ryberg, physician workforce practice leader at SullivanCotter. “They’re prioritizing security in the form of base salaries.”
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