Physician Assistant Salary in Oklahoma 2026,
$136,550 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $136,550 a year, or $65.65 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $129,250 and $161,560 and a full range of $102,890 to $173,010. That is essentially level with the $135,880 national median, and considerably stronger once Oklahoma's low income tax rate and cost of living are accounted for.

Oklahoma City at $138,920, ahead of Tulsa at $134,380 and Lawton at $132,220. The spread of under seven thousand dollars across the three published metros is narrow, which means the specialty you practise and the setting you work in will move your pay far more than the city will.

Through the State Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision. You need a degree from an ARC-PA accredited programme and current NCCPA certification, and you file a supervising physician arrangement with the board. Oklahoma is unusual in that the same board also licenses physical therapists and physical therapist assistants, so several allied professions sit under one regulatory roof here.

Yes. Oklahoma requires a supervising physician arrangement filed with the Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision, and that document defines your prescriptive authority and how much latitude you have day to day. In a hospital or large group the arrangement is typically light-touch; in a small independent practice it can be more restrictive. Read it before signing — it shapes your working life more than your job title does.

Surgical and high-acuity practice. Surgical first assisting, emergency medicine and critical care pay materially above the primary care and urgent care roles that make up much of Oklahoma's physician assistant mix, and the academic and tertiary centres in Oklahoma City and Tulsa are where those posts sit. Call obligations and first-assist stipends layer on top and are excluded from the base wage figure. Lead physician assistant roles in the larger systems are the other route.

Because the wage is national and the cost base is not. A median essentially level with the national figure, a 4.75% top income tax rate with no local layer, and housing costs well below the national average combine to make an Oklahoma physician assistant's disposable income among the highest available for this occupation. Compare with Oregon in this same batch: the Oregon median is higher in gross terms, but a 9.9% state rate plus Portland-area local income taxes and much higher housing costs close most of the difference. For a physician assistant optimising real income rather than salary headline, Oklahoma is a genuinely competitive proposition.

It is a base-wage median excluding call pay, surgical first-assist stipends, productivity bonuses and — importantly in this state — the loan repayment and incentive arrangements that tribal health systems, Indian Health Service facilities and rural shortage-area employers offer. Those can be worth a great deal to an early-career physician assistant carrying education debt and do not appear in a wage series at all. The figure also blends primary care with surgical subspecialty practice, which the $102,890 to $173,010 range makes plain.

Specialty above everything: surgical first assisting, emergency medicine and critical care are what reach the $161,560 seventy-fifth percentile and the $173,010 ninetieth, and that gap dwarfs the seven-thousand-dollar metro spread. Setting second — the Oklahoma City and Tulsa academic and tertiary centres pay above community practice. Then call and first-assist stipends, negotiated individually. And for anyone with education debt, the tribal health system and shortage-area loan repayment arrangements are worth pricing seriously alongside the salary itself.