How AAFP’s career dashboard can help family physicians win their next contract negotiation

Family physicians face mounting pressures in today’s health care landscape: shifting compensation models, rising burnout rates, and the challenge of navigating employment contracts in an increasingly consolidated system. To support its members, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) launched the Family Medicine Career Benchmark Dashboard, a data tool designed to empower physicians with salary transparency, job satisfaction insights, and negotiating leverage.

Medical Economics spoke with AAFP President Jen Brull, M.D., about the biggest career challenges facing family physicians today and how the dashboard can help clinicians better understand their value in the workforce.

Medical Economics: What are some of the key career challenges family physicians are facing right now?

Brull: What we’re hearing is that because most primary care physicians today are employed rather than independent, they need support navigating early career decisions and employment contracts. New physicians want to know what to expect. Burnout is a major issue. Understanding your value (what you should be making, how you should feel in your role) is part of both preventing burnout and thriving in your career. Family physicians need tools to evaluate how different roles and settings affect their well-being, benefits, and compensation.

Medical Economics: Tell us about the Family Medicine Career Benchmark Dashboard. What is it, and how can family physicians use it?

Brull: It’s the first tool of its kind for our specialty. The dashboard provides free, comprehensive compensation and job satisfaction data to AAFP members, and we allow any family physician, member or not, to contribute data. Physicians can see how their income, benefits, and satisfaction levels compare to peers in similar roles, with state-specific data that includes pay structures, paid time off, CME funding, sign-on bonuses, and more.

Medical Economics: Why was it important to include more than just salary data?

Brull: Life is a series of trade-offs. Maybe you’re making less, but you live in a community that feeds your soul. Or you trade salary for benefits like flexibility or CME funding. If we only present compensation data, we miss the full picture of career satisfaction. The dashboard helps physicians understand that balance.

Medical Economics: Most physicians today work under contracts. How does this tool help with negotiation?

Brull: Pay transparency is powerful. It shines a light on unconscious bias and discrimination and helps both employers and employees. New doctors often don’t know what’s negotiable or what to ask for. The dashboard gives them the data they need to make informed decisions. It can help narrow gender and racial pay gaps.

Many women, for example, don’t negotiate their first contract. Not because they can’t, but because they don’t know how or what’s appropriate. With this data, they can confidently evaluate offers, counter, and demonstrate their marketability.

Medical Economics: How can family physicians get involved?

Brull: We just opened our second survey for data collection. The 2025 version includes new questions around direct primary care and other areas of specialization, including sports medicine. In 2023, over 7,500 family physicians contributed data about their 2022 compensation. We want to top that this year; we’d love to see 10,000 responses. Any family physician can participate, but AAFP members get access to the full data.

Medical Economics: Anything else you’d like to add?

Brull: Thank you for focusing on family medicine and helping to shine a light on this important tool. We’re the doctors who take care of everyone; it’s great to have the chance to advocate for the needs of our specialty.