Medical Practice Manager Salary: What the Data Shows

An owner-physician sits down to make an offer to the person who will run payers, staff, compliance, and cash, and the only number on the table is what the last manager made. BLS puts the May 2025 median for medical and health services managers working in offices of physicians at $105,770, while the median for the whole occupation is $123,860. That is a gap of about 15%, by our arithmetic. Knowing which side of it your job sits on is worth more than any single average.

Which BLS number is your practice manager?

BLS has no occupation called practice manager. Two codes cover most of the people who hold that title in a 1 to 8 physician practice, and they pay very differently. Picking the wrong one is the most common way an offer ends up too low to land or too high to sustain.

BLS describes medical and health services managers (SOC 11-9111) as people who "plan, direct, and coordinate medical and health services," and says they "may manage an entire facility, a specific clinical area or department, or a medical practice for a group of physicians." That is the practice administrator who owns billing oversight, payer relationships, HR, compliance, and the numbers. First-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers (SOC 43-1011) supervise clerical staff. That is the front-office manager who runs the desk, the schedule, and the phones.

Many small practices hire one person who does a bit of both. Price the job you wrote, not the title. If you have not written it yet, start with the medical office manager job description, because the duties decide the code and the code decides the anchor.

The 2025 medical practice manager salary numbers

The mean sits well above the median because a minority of high-paid executive roles pull the average up. For a practice offer, use the median, never the mean. Offices of physicians employ 13% of medical and health services managers, and pay them a median $18,090 less than the all-industry figure, by our arithmetic from BLS data. The two employment counts differ because OEWS surveys wage and salary jobs while the Handbook includes the self-employed.

The spread, from 10th to 90th percentile

A median tells you the middle. The percentiles tell you how much room there is, which is what a negotiation actually happens inside.

The middle half of medical and health services managers earned between $94,700 and $166,100 in May 2025, a spread of $71,400. For office supervisors, the middle half runs from $55,950 to $85,090. The two ranges overlap: a strong office supervisor at the 75th percentile earns about what a manager at the bottom quarter does. That overlap is where most small-practice offers land.

Physician offices pay less than hospitals

Hospital and government roles often carry larger budgets, larger staffs, and more regulatory scope, and they pay for it. That matters for recruiting. A strong candidate leaving a hospital department for your practice is taking a smaller title and often a smaller paycheck, and the offer has to show what they get in return: autonomy, a shorter chain of command, and a business they can actually shape.

Matching the offer to the job

Picture an owner-physician at a three-physician practice. The departing manager ran the front desk, chased denials, handled payroll questions, and renegotiated two payer contracts. The replacement posting says "office manager," and the planned salary was set from the office supervisor median. Every candidate who can do the contract work turns it down.

The table below is ClinicOps judgment, not a BLS category. Use it to pick the anchor, then adjust for your metro.

The job description sets the code, and the code sets the anchor. If the budget only fits the first row, write the job as the first row and build systems for the rest. That trade-off is laid out in hiring a practice manager versus building systems first, and the full-cost comparison is in fractional operations versus hiring another office manager.

A worked offer, step by step

Here is the sequence, using national figures as a stand-in for your metro. Swap in your local numbers before you make a real offer.

Put the review date in the offer letter. Candidates who are leaving a hospital for a smaller paycheck are betting on growth, and a dated review turns that bet into a commitment. Keep the bonus tied to things the manager controls, such as days to submit a prior auth or credentialing files with no lapses, never to physician productivity they cannot influence.

What MGMA publishes, and what it charges for

MGMA's DataDive Management and Staff Compensation survey is the specialty standard for practice management pay, and its dollar medians sit behind a paywall. We cite only what MGMA publishes openly.

MGMA's public summary of its 2025 management and staff compensation data (June 30, 2025) reports median compensation growth from 2015 to 2024 of 39.6% for general management and 36.3% for supervisors. Executive management grew 45.6% over the same period. If your practice is an MGMA member, the DataDive numbers by region and practice size are worth pulling, because they are built on medical groups rather than all healthcare employers.

Getting your local number in five minutes

National medians are a starting point. Candidates compare your offer with local pay, and local pay can sit far above or below the national figure.

One adjustment matters. OEWS state and metro estimates cover all industries, including hospitals, while the physician-office median is national. If your local all-industry 11-9111 median is high because a large hospital system dominates the market, that is the employer your candidate may be leaving. Record every figure with its release, such as "BLS OEWS May 2025, pulled October 2026," so nobody uses it two years after it stops being true.

What losing a manager costs

A common estimate puts the cost of turnover at about 40% of the role's salary, covering recruiting, the vacancy, and the ramp-up. At the $105,770 physician-office median, that estimate is about $42,300 per departure, by our arithmetic. The real cost is usually larger, because a practice manager leaving takes the undocumented parts of the practice with them. The 30-day rebuild plan exists for exactly that week.

Pay is one retention lever. Systems are the other: documented workflows, a weekly dashboard, and a role that does not depend on one person's memory. A manager who runs a practice built that way can take a vacation, and is far less likely to leave. Track the job with the practice manager weekly KPIs, and hold regular conversations using the stay interview questions. The SOPs, trackers, and checklists that make the role survivable are free in the ClinicOps Template Library.

Frequently asked questions