Urgent Care Physician Salary (2026): Hourly Rates, Annual Pay and How It Compares

Urgent care is one of the most common jobs for family physicians and emergency physicians who want predictable shifts, and a frequent moonlighting job for residents. It is also hard to price, because there is no urgent care specialty in the big salary surveys and most jobs are quoted per hour. This guide pulls together what the surveys and 2026 job postings say, converts hourly rates to annual pay, and compares the result with family medicine and emergency medicine.

What urgent care physicians earn

Doximity and Medscape don't report urgent care as a specialty, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts urgent care physicians under their own specialties. The best large-survey figure is Doximity's practice-setting data: physicians of any specialty whose setting is an urgent care center or chain.

Pay estimates on job boards often run lower, because they average posted base pay, including part-time roles, and leave out bonuses. Doximity also found that urgent care centers had the highest pay growth of any practice setting for the second year in a row, though they still rank near the bottom: only government jobs averaged less.

Hourly rates in current postings

Pay-transparency laws in states such as California, Washington, New York, New Jersey and Maryland mean many urgent care postings now show a range. These are employers' own posted ranges for physicians.

The middle of the market is roughly $120 to $185 an hour. The top of the range is in high-cost West Coast markets run by physician groups. Within a posted range, experience, the site and the shift (nights, weekends, holidays) set where you land; CityMD, for example, adds up to $45 an hour for holiday and extended-hour shifts at some sites.

From hourly rate to annual pay

Most full-time urgent care schedules are 12-hour shifts. One California posting defines full-time as 12 twelve-hour shifts a month; others ask for 14 shifts. The table shows what each rate pays in a year on those two schedules.

Read the other way, Doximity's $326,447 average works out to about $189 an hour on 12 shifts a month, or $162 on 14, before bonuses. A posting that looks rich per hour can still pay less in a year if it offers fewer shifts.

Urgent care vs. family medicine and emergency medicine

Against family medicine, urgent care pays about the same on average. The difference is the job: urgent care is shift work with no patient panel, no inbox and usually no call, while outpatient family medicine pays for continuity and often for productivity. For some family physicians, urgent care pays the same for a schedule they find easier to live with.

Against emergency medicine, urgent care pays about $97K less a year on average. Per hour the gap is larger: ACEP's 2025 survey found a median base of $225 an hour for emergency physicians, against $110 to $185 in most urgent care postings. Emergency physicians who move to urgent care usually trade that pay for lower acuity and fewer overnight shifts.

W-2, 1099 and locums

Most permanent urgent care jobs are W-2, with benefits and employer-paid malpractice. Contractor and locum work is usually 1099, and the rate has to be higher to come out even, because you pay both halves of Social Security and Medicare tax and your own health insurance, and get no retirement match.

For example, $150 an hour as a 1099 contractor on 12 twelve-hour shifts a month is $259,200 a year. After self-employment tax, income tax, a $9,325 health premium and $5,000 of licenses and dues, that matches a W-2 salary of about $228,942 with a typical retirement match, or about $132 an hour, for a single physician in Texas. Run your own numbers in our locum rate calculator, and see 1099 physician taxes for estimated payments and retirement accounts.

Barton Associates, a locum agency, puts urgent care locum rates at $110 to $160 an hour, and AMN Healthcare's current urgent care locum listings run about $136 to $147. Agencies usually provide malpractice coverage; confirm whether it includes tail.

Patient volume and bonuses

Most urgent care pay is a flat hourly rate, sometimes with a quarterly bonus tied to performance or volume. Few postings publish the bonus formula, so ask for it in writing: the threshold, the dollars per patient or visit above it, and how often it pays out.

• Volume: the Urgent Care Association reported a median of 40 patient visits per center per day in 2022, up from an average of 32 before COVID. One California posting expects physicians to see four patients an hour.
• Supervision: many centers staff nurse practitioners and physician assistants alongside a physician, and some postings expect the physician to supervise several of them. Ask whether supervision is paid, and how it counts toward volume.
• Differentials: weekend, holiday and evening premiums can add meaningfully to the base rate.

The urgent care job market in 2026

• More centers: the Urgent Care Association counted 15,398 open centers in March 2026, about 40% of them affiliated with or owned by hospitals, up from about 9,000 in 2016.
• More nurse practitioners and physician assistants: the share of centers using NPs and PAs as the main on-site providers rose from 54.4% in 2019 to 71.6% in 2022, according to the Urgent Care Association's 2023 white paper as reported by its journal. Physician jobs remain, but many now include supervision.
• Pay rising anyway: the Urgent Care Association's compensation surveys showed median hourly physician pay up 19% from 2022 to 2024 (its survey method changed between the two years), and Doximity's urgent care setting average rose 6.1% in its latest report.
• Closures and consolidation: some operators are shrinking. Optum's MedExpress closed most of its centers, Legacy Health closed its Washington urgent cares and two in Portland in November 2025, and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey agreed in October 2026 to buy Summit Health's New Jersey operations, including CityMD's New Jersey sites. Check the employer's footprint before you relocate for a job.

Who gets hired

Urgent care is not a specialty with its own recognized board. Employers hire physicians who are board certified or eligible in family medicine, emergency medicine or internal medicine; Sutter's 2026 postings, for example, require one of the three. Pediatric urgent care hires pediatricians. The American Board of Urgent Care Medicine offers a separate certification, but says it is not required to practice, and the American Board of Physician Specialties' urgent care board has stopped accepting new applicants. A few post-residency urgent care fellowships exist, but none is required.

What to ask before you sign

1. The schedule: how many shifts a month count as full-time, shift length, and how many weekends and holidays you work.
2. The rate and differentials: base hourly rate, and premiums for nights, weekends and holidays.
3. The bonus formula: threshold, dollars per patient above it, and payout timing.
4. Supervision: how many NPs and PAs you oversee, and whether it is paid.
5. W-2 or 1099: and, if 1099, a rate high enough to cover what an employer would pay.
6. Malpractice: who pays, and whether it includes tail coverage.
7. Noncompete: radius and length, which matter in markets with several urgent care chains. See our noncompete guide.