This Specialty Saw an 8.7% Salary Increase: 2026 MGMA Benchmarks Are Here
The 2026 MGMA compensation benchmarks are now available on Marit, alongside AMGA benchmarks and 30,000+ peer-reported salaries across 190 specialties. Clinicians who share their salary on Marit can access an MGMA compensation snapshot for their specialty for free.
Which specialties gained the most
This year's data shows notable year-over-year compensation increases. The biggest movers:
Psychiatry's 8.7% gain is consistent with broader demand trends driven by the national behavioral health shortage. Infectious Disease and Rheumatology, both historically lower-compensated internal medicine subspecialties, also saw significant jumps. Several of the largest gains appeared in specialties facing well-documented supply-demand pressures.
The specialties with the smallest gains or losses are:
Five specialties saw compensation decline, with Hepatology down almost 9.7% year-over-year. Cardiology and Plastic Surgery were essentially flat at +0.2%.
See your 2026 data
Share your salary on Marit to unlock your specialty's compensation data, including 2026 MGMA benchmarks, at marithealth.com.
Why this access matters
Compensation negotiations in medicine still run through MGMA. Employers cite it. Contracts reference it. But for years, the clinicians on the other side of those conversations had no way to see the data being used to set their pay. Last year, Marit became the first platform to make MGMA benchmarks available to verified clinicians alongside peer-reported salaries, giving clinicians a more complete view of compensation for their specialty.
With 80% of physicians now employed by hospitals or corporate entities (up from 40% a decade ago) and a projected 86,000 physician shortage by 2036, transparent compensation data is one of the few tools clinicians have to negotiate from an informed position.
A growing community
Marit recently crossed 100,000 clinicians in just 15 months, making it the fastest-growing community platform in medicine. That growth means the peer-reported salary data on the platform gets more representative and more useful with every clinician who contributes.
Marit provides access to an MGMA compensation snapshot for your specialty, licensed from MGMA. This does not include MGMA's full commercial dataset.
