Salary is a big part of whether a job ultimately ends up being a good fit, so it’s important for physicians to know their worth in the job market and to ask for it. Having access to salary data empowers doctors to know whether they are being compensated appropriately. Hospice and palliative care physicians need transparency about what the average salary is, as well as about other typical parts of the compensation package, so that they can leverage this information during contract negotiations.
We have therefore tried to provide both concrete data points as well as compile physician salary data on what doctors make, and make it available to our members for free, as opposed to having to pay for expensive databases. Using data gathered from our physician online communities, we have started this series on compensation data by specialty to assess aggregate data from our physician salary and compensation database provided by physicians across the country.
Disclaimers/Disclosures: This information is derived from our physician salary and compensation databases, but is subject to self-reporting errors and availability of relevant data points from our online communities. This information is provided for educational purposes only, and is aimed at advocating for individual physicians. It is not intended to be used for collective bargaining; please see additional disclosures and disclaimers on the physician salary data pages. Please also do your own research before making any decisions based on the information provided. We are not formal financial, legal, or tax professionals and do not provide individualized advice. You should consult these as appropriate. We highly recommend having your physician employment agreement reviewed by a physician contract review attorney to ensure you have the most up to date and relevant information for your specific situation.
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How Hospice and Palliative Care Aggregate Stats Were Determined
The data for hospice and palliative care doctors below was compiled using data points anonymously contributed to our database between mid-2023 and mid-2024. While we typically like to have more data points before assessing aggregate statistics for a specialty, at the time of this article, we only had 62 contributions available. Smaller datasets may be less representative of the overall landscape of the specialty. As such, we remind you to access the full free doctor salary and negotiation database to compare your situation to relevant data. A local physician employment contract review attorney can also help you assess what current market trends are in your area.
Unless otherwise noted, the stats below are for full-time attending hospice and palliative care physicians, determined based on a full-time equivalency of an average 36+ hours worked a week. We excluded data contributed by residents and fellows.
We would love to reassess the statistics and further expand insights based upon future data. As such, we will continue to update this page as more contributions are received.
If you haven’t already, please contribute your anonymous physician salary and negotiation data to help others in your specialty.
How Much Do Hospice and Palliative Care Physicians Make in 2024?
The average annual salary across all of our contributing hospice and palliative care physicians for 2024 was $257,000, including doctors practicing part time and full time.
A single average annual salary can be misleading, as several factors affect salary. We break this number down further to help you find more relevant comparison points.
Average Full-Time Hospice and Palliative Care Salary for 2024
While we don’t have enough data points to assess a part-time salary for 2024, we did omit the part-time contributions we had to look at just the average salary for full-time work. For 2024, the average annual salary for hospice and palliative care physicians was $262,000. To give you an idea on the range of salaries around this average, a few extra stats:
The highest reported salary was $475,000 a year.
The lowest reported salary was $165,000 a year.
The median salary was $262,500.
Below, we break this number down further by specialty and by other factors that commonly affect salaries for doctors.
How Much Hospice and Palliative Care Physicians Make by Specialization
When our members contribute to our physician salary and negotiation database, they can specify their specialty within their field of medicine. As many physicians practice either hospice care or palliative care only, we wanted to assess if salaries differed based on their focus. As several members mentioned they came from either a family medicine or internal medicine track, we looked at the differences between their track into hospice and palliative care.
Our members have asked for us to break hospice and palliative care into two separate specialties as many doctors practice one or the other exclusively, but we don’t currently have enough data to do so. If you’d like to see this in the future and haven’t already, please take a few minutes to contribute your anonymous physician salary and compensation data so that we can expand our articles in the future.
Average Hospice Physician Salary
For 2024, the average full-time hospice physician salary was $261,000. This is about the same as the average for palliative care physicians.
Average Palliative Care Physician Salary
In our current pool of data, a higher percentage of doctors reported working palliative care only versus hospice care only. This was further broken down by inpatient only, outpatient only, or a combination of both, but we don’t currently have enough contributions to assess averages for these subsets yet, so we looked at palliative care as a whole.
For 2024, the average full-time palliative care physician salary was $260,000, which is almost the same as our average overall for both hospice and palliative care.
Hospice and Palliative Care Salaries for Family Medicine vs Internal Medicine
While we don’t have enough data yet to assess averages for family medicine versus internal medicine, our current data suggests that hospice and palliative care physicians with an internal medicine specialization may earn more than hospice and palliative care doctors with a family medicine specialization.
Hospice and Palliative Care Physician Salary by Gender
We also looked at what our female doctors averaged in earnings compared to their male counterparts.
Female hospice and palliative care physicians reported an average salary of $262,000. Male hospice and palliative doctors reported just slightly less earnings with an average salary of $257,000.
Throughout our how much doctors make by specialty series, we’ve typically seen the gender gap trend in the opposite direction. With smaller datasets, each individual contribution can skew the data more, so we’re hesitant to draw any conclusive observations. We did notice, however, that 86% of our male contributions worked for academic hospitals, which are typically one of the lowest paid practice environments for doctors, while several of our female physicians worked for non-academic hospitals and corporate groups, which typically earn more. We looked into this next.
How Much Hospice and Palliative Care Doctors Make by Practice Environment
We next broke down the data by where our members reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Corporate groups: $265,000
Hospital, academic: $259,000
Hospital, non-academic: $266,000
As noted above, our hospice and palliative care physicians employed by academic hospital systems earned the least, which we’ve seen across other medical specialties as well.
The non-academic hospital employees and the physicians working for corporate groups reported similar salaries, around 3% more than their academic colleagues. This is a smaller salary gap than we’ve seen in other specialties (we look into this a little more next), and we like to remind doctors that salary is only one component of the overall compensation package. Positions with academic hospitals often qualify for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or have better retirement benefits, which is one of the reasons we say to consider not just the salary but the entire proposed offer.
Hospice and Palliative Care Physician Salary by Type of Employment
We often see trends of significantly higher average salaries for physicians in private practice versus those working for hospital systems. While we didn’t see that in our current dataset, we also noted that all our current correspondents are W2 employees. Many times, salaries from owners and partners in private practice can skew the average for the private practice environment, as they often make significantly more than W2 employees.
How Much Hospice and Palliative Care Doctors Make by Hours Worked
Medicine can often be an “eat what you kill” industry, so we wanted to look at how average salaries varied in 2024 by reported hours worked by our hospice and palliative care physicians.
36-40 hours a week - $261,000
41-45 hours a week - $261,000
46+ hours a week - $264,000
Interestingly, for hospice and palliative care, we didn’t see the general trend of increasing salaries with additional work, though we did note that the highest salary reported was by a physician who also reported working the most hours on average a week.
The average hospice and palliative care physician salary is lower than we’ve seen for many of the other specialties in our how much doctors make series, as has been the pattern with other specialties that are not procedure heavy. We at least noted that with the lower salaries compared to other specialties, they also reported working less as well, with 80% reporting working 45 hours a week or less.
Many hospice and palliative care physicians also reported spending little to no time charting at home on top of their average hours worked a week, though 33% did report an additional 5+ hours a week charting. If you happen to find yourself spending a lot of time charting, an AI scribe may be able to dramatically decrease the amount of time you spend charting. We have a free trial and a long standing discount on an AI scribing solution in our practice resources for physicians, in case you need one!
Changes in Hospice and Palliative Care Salaries Over Time
As noted above, the data analyzed included contributions from mid 2023 to mid 2024, reflecting data from our most recent salary and compensation database.
We also dug into our previous salary database we started in 2018 to get an idea of the trends in average pay for hospice and palliative care doctors over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at physicians out of residency/fellowship who worked on average 36+ hours a week. For 2023, we combined the data from the old database and the new database, cutting off entries at the transition point to help omit any overlapping or duplicate information.
2018-2020: $252,000
2021-2023: $251,000
2024: $262,000
Salary trends for hospice and palliative care doctors seem to have stayed relatively stagnant over the past several years, though we do see a 4% increase for 2024. Again, smaller datasets make it difficult to draw conclusions, but we hope that with continued advocacy for salary transparency, we’ll start to see a trend of increasing salaries over time as physicians negotiate for their worth, including increases to keep up with inflation.
Learn more about negotiating contracts with our guide to your first physician employment contract review and negotiation for residents and fellows and our full primer on physician contract negotiations and contract review.
Additional Insights into Hospice and Palliative Care Compensation Packages
Since salary is only one component of an overall employment package, we also like to look at trends in other parts of compensation.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses Hospice and Palliative Care Doctors Receive
43% of hospice and palliative care physicians reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with an average amount of $18,000. Signing bonuses varied anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000.
Learn more about signing bonuses for physicians.
18% of our hospice and palliative care doctors reported receiving a relocation bonus, with an average of $12,000. Moving bonuses ranged from $7,500 to $23,000.
Average Vacation Days Hospice and Palliative Care Physicians Receive
The average number of annual vacation days hospice and palliative care physicians received was 23 days. The median was 21 days. Reported vacation time varied anywhere from two and a half weeks to eight weeks.
Some doctors mentioned that their vacation time was part of a common pool of paid time off, along with holidays, sick time, etc.
CME Stipends for Hospice and Palliative Care Doctors
79% of our hospice and palliative care doctors reported receiving some sort of CME stipend. Stipends ranged from $750 to $6,500, with an average of $3,500.
Average Student Loan Debt for Hospice and Palliative Care
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our hospice and palliative care doctors who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $291,000. The higher your federal loan debt burden, the more beneficial repayment programs and loan forgiveness programs can be.
Learn more about doctor student loans. If you’ve been considering refinancing to help with the debt burden, you can also explore our student loan refinancing options.
Extra Insights from Hospice and Palliative Care Physicians
As part of our salary and compensation data contributions, members of our physician online community can provide additional comments. As we compile our aggregate salary data for these articles, we like to look at some of the insights provided by other physicians in the specialty. With the limited number of data points we have, we don’t currently have many, but two that stuck out were:
Along with public student loan forgiveness, some academic positions offer tuition benefits for employed physicians or their dependents
One physician commented they were offered significantly ($40,000) less than male colleagues in an equal or lesser position
Again, we see how salary transparency can be key with negotiating a new position or contract, and how having relevant data can help empower you to negotiate the best deal possible.
Increasing Your Hospice and Palliative Care Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income in hospice and palliative care. But a reminder first to look at the overall picture. Salary is a key component to physician compensation, but it isn’t the only part of a well negotiated physician employment contract.
If you like where you work but don’t love the pay, consider setting aside a time to talk with management. If you are a valued part of their team, they may be willing to work with you to renegotiate your contract versus risking you leaving. Their answer may be no, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Be practical in what you’re expecting and respectful in your request. Diving deeper into the salary and compensation data for physicians for comparable situations can help you get a target idea of what to try to renegotiate for.
Looking for additional career opportunities can also help. Sometimes, an employer may either not be able to or just not willing to work with you to get you to where you should be. That doesn’t mean every job will come with the same constraints. Interviewing for a few other positions can give you a feel of what the market looks like from the employer’s perspective by what employers are willing to offer. Explore open opportunities on our Physician Side Gigs job board, and explore all our physician career resources and education to help you navigate the job search process.
While we think the data above and in our database can be a great tool during the negotiation process, we almost always also recommend hiring a local contract review attorney for physicians to review your contract. They will have invaluable experience when it comes to negotiating physician contracts, including understanding what red flags to watch out for.
If you’re looking to increase your income in hospice and palliative care but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Opportunities to consider include:
In-home concierge services
Becoming an end of life doula
Working as a patient navigator
Explore more side gigs for palliative care doctors.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Hospice and Palliative Care Physicians
Explore our related articles and resources on doctor compensation and salaries:
If you haven’t recently, please take a few minutes to contribute! The data provided is used only for the purpose of our database to help physicians like yourself negotiate better compensation by helping provide salary transparency with relevant data. The data is completely anonymous and is only available to members of our Physician Side Gigs Facebook group. Contribution links can be found on our compensation data for physicians page.
Looking for a new career opportunity? Explore the Physician Side Gigs job board for current opportunities.
If you need guidance on negotiating your next contract for the best possible deal, check out:
Also check out side gigs for palliative care doctors.