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The third installment in our series Family Physician Competitive Pay

The phrase “competitive pay” is an invitation to negotiate.

You have seen the hollow phrases of “competitive pay” or “generous compensation” and the like when reading job descriptions for family medicine physicians. It often comes off as evasive or deceptive. Chances are you hate reading it.

What “competitive pay” usually means is the practice doesn’t know what they’re going to pay a physician. Small practices don’t know market rates because they don’t look often. These small practices want to answer the compensation question without losing applicants. Large, multi-state health systems make the compensation unclear in job postings because the person writing the job description doesn’t know the compensation.

These generic answers are not legally enforceable. That’s why they’re everywhere.*

When I talk to practice owners, what they are willing to offer depends on a wide variety of factors that they simply can’t guess about you as an applicant.

Here are some things that tip the scales:

• Family ties to the area and likely to stay: greater pay
• Great personality—even made them laugh during the interview: greater pay
• A board action that wasn’t so bad you’re right out of consideration: lower pay
• Board Certified through the American Board of Family Medicine: greater pay
• Board Certified through the American Board of Physician Specialists: lower pay

“Competitive pay” is an invitation to negotiate.

That’s the good news. Hard and fast lines on compensation make the numbers easier to include in the job descriptions. They also make compensation inflexible.

No one got into family medicine because they love debating the ins and outs of someone’s compensation. Candidates usually want to make more money but don’t want to poison the well. Practices want great physicians but don’t want to be held accountable for paying top dollar for someone unexperienced. The solution is to have a facilitated conversation. Speak with a specialized, independent recruiter that works in family medicine every day.

MGMA Guidelines:

A lot of job postings will claim to be competitive based on Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) guidelines. MGMA does have high quality information. There will always be doubts as to it’s validity. For a long time, they had the best information on compensation for family medicine physicians. Now it is the AAFP’s Career Benchmark Dashboard. MGMA’s information is still very, very good.

If a practice tells you the percentile of MGMA they pay at, that has meaning. Being at or around the 50^th percentile for MGMA means there are real numbers involved that they can actually be held accountable for.

Being “competitive based on MGMA guidelines” is meaningless. If they something along those lines, ask what percentile they pay at.

In speaking with the head of recruiting for large, rapidly expanding healthcare corporation, their lead internal recruiter told me their pay was competitive based on MGMA guidelines. Pressed for the percentile. they said they pay at the 25^th percentile. That means three out of four family medicine physicians are getting paid more than their doctors. And that legally* qualifies as “competitive based on MGMA guidelines”.

AAFP’s Career Benchmark Dashboard:

The American Academy of Family Physicians got about 7% of family physicians to disclose their compensation. Only AAFP members have access to the dashboard that shows compensation, so you won’t see it mentioned in job postings. It is an excellent resources for negotiating salaries once you have been offered a job. It lets you sort by careers stage and geographic area.

Their nationwide information is great. Getting too granular skews the sample pool and lowers the quality of the information. Make sure to keep any local market in context for the state, neighboring states, and the nation as a whole.

Salary versus Total Compensation:

A great question to ask during the compensation conversation is, “All-in, what is a range I could reasonably expect to earn?”

Online forums, the AAFP dashboard, and MGMA are talking about total compensation. That includes bonuses. Salaries will always be lower. If something seems low in a job posting or in initial conversations with a practice, your compensation for the position can still be high. Try to only rule out positions based on compensation after you have received the offer.

Job postings with terms like “competitive pay” or “generous compensation” are invitations to negotiate. Negotiating is uncomfortable and goes smoother when you and the hiring authority walk into the room thinking about similar numbers. If you’re looking for a new opportunity, talk with a specialized recruiter. You can email me, Ben Kennedy, at bkennedy@etsfamilymedicine.com or call/text me at (540) 400-7641.

*This is not legal advice. I am not an attorney. Always consult an attorney regarding legal matters.

This article was originally published on November 14th, 2023. It was updated on April 25th, 2025. It was made and updated without the use of Artificial Intelligence.