Radiologists remain among employers’ 5 most-requested specialists, staffing firm says
Radiologists remain among healthcare employers’ five most-requested medical specialists, according to new data from AMN Healthcare released Tuesday.
Hiring managers made 76 requests for rads with the Dallas-based talent search firm in 2025-2026, the same number seen in the previous year’s report. Nurse practitioners claimed the top spot for the sixth year in a row with 209 requests, followed by family medicine physicians (117), anesthesiologists (92), and internists (78).
The average starting salary for radiologists is about $571,000, according to AMN, up 14.2% from the previous report. This compares to an average starting salary of $419,000 across all physicians, up 4%. Gastroenterologists claimed the top spot in pay this year at $654,000, supplanting orthopedic surgeons, who were No. 1 in 2024-2025.
"An aging population is driving demand for specialists faster than the supply of physicians in procedural fields like gastroenterology, cardiology and urology can keep up," Robin Johnson, group president of Nursing, Allied and Physician Solutions at AMN Healthcare, said in a statement Oct. 19. “Hospitals and medical groups are responding by competing harder for every candidate and signing bonuses have become one of the most effective ways to stand out when a physician is weighing multiple offers."
Radiologists recorded the sixth highest year-over-year gain in 2026, according to AMN. Urologists saw the biggest pay jump, with average starting salaries rising about 22.5%, up to an average of $638,000. Others making the top five included non-invasive cardiologists ($568,000/20.9%), gastroenterologists ($654,000/18.5%), otolaryngologists ($575,000/18%), and hospitalists ($328,500/17.8%).
AMN Healthcare determines demand for docs in part by tracking the number of search engagements conducted for various types of providers. Specialties with a high numbers of physicians, such as family medicine, generate a comparatively high number of searches. When ranking specialties by “absolute demand”—or the number of job openings as a percent of all active providers in a given specialty—radiology landed at No. 6 on the list, while hematologists/oncologists were No. 1.
AMN also offered average radiologists starting salaries based on practice setting. Those working in non-academic institutions earned the highest average at about $604,000, up from $582,000 in the previous report. Academic radiologists were next at $520,500 (up from $439,000).
Most contracts (about 68% across all physicians) offered a salary plus production bonus. These incentives were most often tied to RVUs (relative value units), measuring the volume and complexity of services rendered. AMN also highlighted a growing shift among docs toward 1099 independent contractor arrangements, along with telehealth becoming a permanent practice setting.
Psychiatrists led all physicians on that front, with almost 86% reporting a video visit in the prior week and 57% relying on videoconferencing for over 20% of weekly visits. Other specialties with high telehealth use, ranked by the share conducting more than 20% of visits virtually, included neurology (32%), endocrinology (24%), gastroenterology (20%), family and general medicine (20%), and urology (19%).
“Another key takeaway on the growth of telehealth involves teleradiology,” the report notes. “Before the pandemic, teleradiology served primarily as a stopgap for overnight coverage, but that characterization no longer holds. Radiologist shortages, rising imaging volumes, and growing demand for subspeciality access have elevated teleradiology into a core workforce strategy that healthcare organizations now depend on year-round.”
AMN’s 2026 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives is based on a representative sample of 1,293 permanent physician and advanced practitioner search engagements, conducted between April 2025 and March 2026.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.