What Is the Average Urgent Care Physician Salary?
- Nisha Mehta, MD
- Dec 13, 2024
- 12 min read
Updated: Aug 13
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. Physicians practicing in an urgent care environment need transparency about what the average compensation is, as well as about other typical parts of the compensation package (if applicable), so that they can leverage this information during contract negotiations.
We have therefore tried to provide both concrete data points as well as compile aggregate 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, this series on compensation data by specialty assesses 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 Urgent Care Aggregate Stats Were Determined
The data for urgent care below was compiled using data points anonymously contributed to our database between late-2023 and late-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 64 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 and find apples to apples comparisons. A local physician employment contract review attorney can also help you assess what current market trends are in your area.
The average full-time salary / earnings stats below are for attending urgent care doctors, determined based on a full-time equivalent of an average 36+ hours worked a week. We excluded data contributed by residents and fellows.
If you haven’t already, please contribute your anonymous physician salary and negotiation data to help others in your specialty.
How Much Does an Urgent Care Doctor Make?
The average annual salary across all of our contributing urgent care doctors was $282,000, including physicians practicing part time and full time (and those who did not specify). The median overall reported salary was $292,000.
Given the shift schedule common with many urgent care positions, several physicians reported hourly rates along with their annual salaries or earnings. Our members indicate when they contribute the average hours per week worked throughout the year, which can fluctuate with shift work and make it difficult to compare apples to apples. Along with salaries, we also assessed hourly rates when reported.
Some of the physicians reported a range of rates. To standardize the data in order to provide aggregate stats, we used the lowest rate provided. This can make direct comparisons less valid depending on the situation, so we always recommend accessing our full free physician salary and compensation database to make sure you’re comparing relevant data.
The average hourly rate for urgent care doctors was $154/hour. To give you a better idea of the range in hourly rates:
Median hourly rate was $142/hour
Hourly rates ranged from $90/hr - $300/hr
Some physicians mentioned a range in rates, such as $120-$150/hr, depending on the situation
A single average can be misleading, so we break down the average salary and hourly rate further to help you find more relevant comparison points.
Average Full-Time Urgent Care Physician Salary
Part-time salaries can skew the overall average, so let’s look at full-time versus part-time separately. As noted above, for a full-time equivalent, we assumed an average number of hours worked a week of 36 hours or more.
The average salary for full-time urgent care doctors was $315,000. A few extra stats:
The highest reported salary was $560,000
The lowest reported salary was $199,000
The median salary was $310,000
Average Part-Time Urgent Care Physician Salary
To assess a part-time average, we looked at attending physicians who reported working 21-35 hours a week. Below, we look further into how much urgent care physicians make by hours worked.
The average part-time salary for urgent care physicians was $234,000. The median part-time salary was $240,000.
How Much Urgent Care Physicians Make by Specialization
Urgent care doctors can designate a specialization when contributing to our databases. While we didn’t have enough data points to assess averages for every specialty, we looked at overall trends.
Emergency medicine urgent care physicians. All current data was for part-time doctors, and reported pay was above the overall urgent care average.
Family medicine urgent care physicians. The majority (~75%) of our urgent care physicians were family medicine. The average hourly rate for family medicine urgent care doctors was $158 and the average full-time salary was $305,000. Both of these are about the same as the average across urgent care.
Pediatric urgent care physicians. All the pediatric urgent care data was contributed by part-time physicians. The average part-time pediatric urgent care salary was $249,000. The highest reported salary was from a physician working for a corporate group. We assess trends in pay by practice environment below.
If you would like to see your specialization added or expanded upon, please take a few minutes to contribute your anonymous physician salary and compensation data for the current year to help us update this article in the future.
Urgent Care Physician Salary by Gender
We next compared salaries and hourly rates by gender.
Female urgent care physicians reported an average salary of $296,000, with an average rate of $153/hour. Male urgent care doctors reported an average salary of $339,000, with an average rate of $157/hour.
When looking strictly at salaries, male urgent care doctors reported 14% higher earnings than their female counterparts. Yet, their average hourly rate was only 3% greater. We don’t have enough data to dig into all potential reasons for the differences, but it could be due to male physicians working more hours. We look forward to exploring this more in the future.
How Much Urgent Care Doctors Make by Practice Environment
With a small dataset, we don’t currently have enough data to aggregate an average for every practice environment, but we assessed trends compared to the average across all urgent care doctors for the more common environments.
Corporate groups: average salary of $344,000; average rate of $167/hr
Non-academic hospitals: average salary of $320,000; average rate of $138/hour
Physicians working for both corporate groups and non-academic hospitals reported higher average salaries (9% and 2% respectively) than the overall across all environments. The average hourly rate at non-academic hospitals, however, was lower than the average (12%), which suggests that, on average, urgent care physicians employed at non-academic hospitals either work more on average or receive additional compensation, such as through RVU or other performance bonuses.
Our current data for urgent care physicians working at government facilities and FQHC/other non-profits reported salaries without hourly rates, and the salaries reported were below the average across specialties. This is a trend we’ve commonly seen across specialties in our how much doctors make series, but we always like to note that these positions may offer additional benefits, including student loan repayment programs.
Urgent Care Physician Salary by Type of Employment
While we don’t have enough data to split out averages across types of employment, we also looked at overall trends here.
W2 employed urgent care physicians reported an average hourly rate of $149/hour, which was 3% lower than the overall average. The average full-time W2 salary was $303,000, which was 4% lower than the average.
While the majority of our W2 employed urgent care doctors worked full-time, almost all of our 1099 independent contractor physicians reported working part-time. While we don’t have enough data reported to assess an average rate, the current trend is that 1099 physicians generally reported higher hourly rates than W2 employees. These positions can also provide additional potential tax benefits versus W2 employment.
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We also don’t have enough data to assess an average for partners/owners in group private practices or corporate groups, but hourly rates reported are higher than average, and annual salaries are also generally higher than the average, while only reporting slightly higher average hours worked weekly.
How Much Urgent 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 by reported hours worked for our urgent care doctors.
26-30 hours a week average: $250,000
31-35 hours a week average: $276,000 (10% higher)
36-40 hours a week average: $299,000 (8% higher)
41-50 hours a week average: $347,000 (16% higher)
Our urgent care data shows that income generally increases with the hours worked. For other specialties in our how much doctors make series, we’ve noted how pay doesn’t tend to increase proportionally with additional hours. For urgent care, however, where many doctors report being paid by an hourly rate versus a base salary, we do see a more one-to-one relationship of increased earnings with increased hours worked.
How Much Urgent Care Physicians Work
When we look at salaries by hours worked, we also like to look at how much, on average, doctors in different specialties work.
The majority of urgent care doctors reported working 31-40 hours per week.
Physicians contributing to our physician salary and compensation database can include how many hours a week they also spend charting at home. While the majority of urgent care doctors reported spending less than 5 hours a week charting, 13% reported spending 5+ hours on charting on top of the hours reported in the graphic above.
If you find yourself spending a lot of time charting, an AI scribe may be able to dramatically decrease the amount of time you spend charting. A course on charting efficiency may also be able to help. You can check out our career support resources for doctors for perks on both if either might be useful!
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Changes in the Average Urgent Care Physician Pay 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 urgent 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: average salary of $269,000; average rate of $123/hour
2021-2023: average salary of $283,000; average rate of $132/hour
2024: average salary of $313,000; average rate of $157/hour
Changes in hourly rates. Hourly rates increased 7% for 2021-2023 versus 2018-2020. Interestingly, the average for 2024 was 19% higher than 2018-2020, which is significantly more. Again, smaller datasets can be skewed more easily, and it’s difficult to dig deeper into different factors that can affect these changes. We look forward to continuing to track changes as we grow our salary database in future years.
Changes in average salaries. There was a similar trend in average salaries, where 2024 salaries grew more than 2021-2023 versus 2018-2020. These percentages were less than for hourly rates, so we look forward to seeing in the future how other factors change year over year, such as how much doctors are working on average.
Additional Insights into Urgent 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 Urgent Care Doctors Receive
38% of urgent care doctors reported receiving some sort of sign-on bonus, with an average amount of $32,500. Signing bonuses ranged from $5,000 all the way up to $125,000. We’ve started to see trends of increasing signing bonuses as the physician shortage continues. While we noted that the largest reported sign-on bonuses were from 2024 contributions, we don’t have enough data to assess changes over time yet.
Learn more about:
11% of urgent care physicians reported receiving a relocation bonus, with an average of $7,500. Moving bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $12,000. This is lower than what we’ve seen across other specialties, although this is across all urgent care doctors, including 1099/locums and part-time physicians, which make up a larger part of this specialty than in others we’ve assessed in our how much doctors make series.
Average Vacation Days Urgent Care Physicians Receive
The average and median number of annual vacation days urgent care doctors receive was 20 days. Reported vacation time ranged anywhere from 1 ½ weeks to 8 weeks.
Some urgent care physicians reported their vacation was a common pool of paid time off (PTO). Many, especially those who were independent contractors, reported they didn’t receive any.
CME Stipends for Urgent Care Doctors
41% of our urgent care doctors reported receiving some sort of CME stipend. The average CME stipend was $3,200. Reported stipends ranged anywhere from $1,000 - $5,000.
Explore creative ways to use CME funds.
Average Student Loan Debt for Urgent Care Physicians
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our urgent care doctors who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $242,000. 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.
Increasing Your Urgent Care Physician Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income in urgent 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, like we mentioned above. 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 urgent care but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Side gig opportunities to consider include:
Explore side gigs by your specialty:
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Urgent Care Doctors
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?
If you need guidance on negotiating your next contract for the best possible deal, check out:
Also check out our popular medical and nonmedical side gigs for doctors.