Average Physician Work Week Hours Statistics 2025

The best current national benchmark is 57.8 hours per week. That figure comes from the American Medical Association's 2024 comparison data, published in 2025, and covers nearly 18,000 physician responses from more than 100 health systems and organizations.

It is a useful reference, but not a universal schedule. A solo family physician, an employed hospitalist, and an emergency physician do different work under different staffing arrangements. Survey definitions also matter. Some measures count all work-related activity, while others capture scheduled clinical hours or time recorded inside an electronic health record.

This brief separates those measures and explains how an independent practice can build its own workload baseline. The figures describe groups, not the expected schedule of any individual physician.

Workweek benchmark

The AMA reported an average physician workweek of 57.8 hours in its 2024 national comparison data. The comparable 2023 average was 59 hours.

The last row is a calculation: total time minus the three categories the AMA article lists separately. It is not a named AMA category and may include work captured elsewhere in the survey instrument.

The reported total was 23.5 hours longer than the 34.3-hour average for all private-sector employees in June 2026. That comparison supplies broad labor context only. The Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll measure and the AMA physician survey use different samples and methods, so it is not a like-for-like occupational comparison.

Another AMA source shows why methodology changes the result. A 2024 Physician Practice Information survey presentation reported 52 hours per week for full-time physicians, 21 for part-time physicians, and 44 across both groups. It also reported 45 working weeks per year for the full-time group. The survey was designed for practice-expense measurement rather than physician well-being, and its grouping rules differ from the national comparison data.

Hours by specialty

The AMA's 2024 comparison showed a spread of more than 10 hours between the six specialties listed in its public summary.

Hospital medicine had the longest average in this group. Emergency medicine had the shortest, although a shift-based schedule can carry demands that a weekly total does not show. Every listed specialty reported fewer hours than in 2023.

Career stage was associated with a smaller difference. Physicians 11 to 15 years past residency or fellowship reported 59.1 hours per week. Those more than 20 years past training reported 56.5 hours.

These are organizational comparison figures, not estimates for every U.S. physician. The participating organizations chose to use the AMA survey, and the public report does not present a solo-practice subgroup. The AMA Physician Practice Benchmark Survey uses a separate nationally representative approach to study practice arrangements. Mixing results across the two surveys without their definitions would produce a misleading benchmark.

Where the hours go

Direct patient care was less than half of the reported 57.8-hour week. Indirect patient care and administration together accounted for 20.3 hours. Indirect work included order entry, documentation, test interpretation, and referrals. Administrative work included prior authorization, insurance forms, and meetings.

EHR studies measure a narrower slice of the workweek, but they show why scheduled clinic time can understate workload. A study of 142 family physicians found 5.9 hours of EHR activity during an 11.4-hour weekday. About 1.4 of those EHR hours occurred after clinic. Documentation, order entry, billing, coding, and security work accounted for 44.2% of EHR time; inbox management accounted for another 23.7%.

A separate study covering 471 primary care physicians found an average of 3.08 daily hours on office visits and 3.17 hours on desktop medicine. That category included portal communication, refill and advice requests, orders, staff messages, and result review.

More recent evidence shows that the measurement problem remains. A longitudinal study of 1,052 ambulatory physicians found that EHR time outside scheduled patient hours increased from 4.29 to 5.34 hours per eight scheduled patient hours after the onset of the pandemic. The authors associated greater telemedicine use with more EHR time, much of it spent documenting visits.

Results also vary by clinical setting. A study of 56 primary care pediatricians measured 0.8 hours of EHR use outside scheduled clinic time per workday. For each hour of scheduled EHR use, the physicians recorded about 10 minutes outside scheduled hours.

The AMA comparison offers another view: 22.5% of respondents reported more than eight weekly hours in the EHR outside 5:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. on weekdays. About 24.5% reported zero to two hours of work outside normal hours. Averages can conceal both ends of that range.

For related measures, see our research on physician administrative hours and EHR time per patient visit.

Practice measurement

A solo practice should measure workload for two to four representative weeks before changing staffing or scheduling. Record time in categories that lead to an operational decision:

1. Scheduled patient sessions and direct visit time.
2. Chart review, documentation, orders, and results.
3. Inbox, portal, telephone, and refill work.
4. Prior authorization, forms, billing exceptions, and payer follow-up.
5. Staff supervision, meetings, and business administration.
6. After-hours work, including tasks completed from home.

Keep calendar time separate from active EHR time. A physician may leave a record open while doing something else, while brief off-screen tasks can disappear from an EHR log. The National Center for Health Statistics notes that its ambulatory survey collects information directly from office-based providers and practice records. Local measurement can likewise combine a short diary with system logs instead of relying on either one alone.

Use the baseline to find repeatable work with a clear handoff. Administrative support may gather records, maintain queues, document payer calls, prepare routine forms, and route exceptions. The physician or another qualified professional should retain clinical judgment, final documentation, coding decisions, and work that requires licensed review.

Reducing a queue does not automatically shorten the physician's week. Repeat the measurement after a workflow change and confirm that time moved out of after-hours work rather than into another category. The National Academy of Medicine treats administrative burden as an organizational issue tied to clinician well-being. That supports measuring the system rather than framing workload as an individual resilience problem.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many hours does the average physician work per week?

Physicians in the AMA's 2024 national comparison data reported 57.8 hours of work-related activity per week. Other surveys produce different totals because they use different populations and definitions.

How many hours do family physicians work?

Family medicine physicians in the same comparison reported 53.8 hours per week in 2024, down from 55.5 in 2023. The figure is not specific to solo owners.

How much of the physician workweek is direct patient care?

The AMA reported 27.2 weekly hours of direct patient care, or about 47% of the 57.8-hour total. Indirect patient care accounted for 13 hours and administration for 7.3 hours.

Does after-hours EHR time count as work?

Yes. Documentation, results, orders, messages, and other EHR tasks performed after scheduled clinic hours are work. Studies use different time windows, so the label and measurement method should be stated with the result.

Can a solo practice use 57.8 hours as a staffing target?

No. It is a national organizational comparison, not a recommended schedule or a solo-practice standard. A practice should record its own clinical, indirect, administrative, and after-hours time before setting a staffing target.

Methodology and sources

We prioritized 2024 AMA survey findings because they are the latest public national physician comparison available for this topic. We used government labor data for broad context and peer-reviewed EHR studies to examine work that weekly self-reports may miss. We did not combine their samples into a new pooled estimate. Each table retains the source's original unit, and calculated values are labeled as calculations.

The complete source register appears in the article metadata. Main references include the AMA national comparison, AMA Physician Practice Information survey, BLS weekly-hours table, CDC ambulatory survey overview, and the family medicine EHR time study.