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GonnaBeADoc2222

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Currently on a family trip to San Francisco and Sonoma and I think after this plus a handful of trips to CO and UT that my heart belongs out here.

SF is awesome. Just a really unique city. Great baseball stadium. Might be my favorite US city after this trip. I know they have a homeless problem, but didn't really encounter more homeless than I have in other cities.

Nice to sit amongst the redwoods in Sonoma with my morning coffee.

Too bad the COL is so high and the EM market so poor. Sigh.
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GonnaBeADoc2222 said:
Currently on a family trip to San Francisco and Sonoma and I think after this plus a handful of trips to CO and UT that my heart belongs out here.

SF is awesome. Just a really unique city. Great baseball stadium. Might be my favorite US city after this trip. I know they have a homeless problem, but didn't really encounter more homeless than I have in other cities.

Nice to sit amongst the redwoods in Sonoma with my morning coffee.

Too bad the COL is so high and the EM market so poor. Sigh.
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The secret is to find a city that pays 50% more with cheap, direct flights to your favorite destination in under 2 hours. Then carve out multiple trips a year. Maybe even buy a condo wherever you like going. I feel that way about CO. I'd move there in a heartbeat if say....pay were only 25% less, but I just can't take a 50% pay cut. Luckily, pay is pretty damn good where I'm at and direct flights are 1.5h to Denver. I can hop on a flight and be in the Rockies hiking during the summer in about 4 hours. I take multiple hiking and ski trips out there a year. I don't even mind the park passes and lift tickets. It's the lodging costs that end up killing me. Ah well, you can't have everything. Enjoy the trip!
 
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Yup the COL sucks but the pay isn't that bad. docs where I work average about $300/hr seeing about 2.3/hr. I work in the bay area.
 
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Groove said:
Damn, that's nice. CMG?
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we are phasing out our CMG and changing to the hospital foundation. The number quoted will be the general average among all docs when the phaseout is completed in the near future. with CMG, it was less like 25-40/hr less.

making $400,000/yr in the bay area doesn't get you far, unfortunately. You have to live in hot or generally undesirable ("undesirable" is a matter of opinion) areas. If one could make $340/yr and live in an area where the COL is 50-60% what it is in the bay area, you would be doing quite well.
 
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Yeah unfortunately the real estate is insane. We were staying in a quite nice vacation rental in the outer mission (ok.... Not amazing area) about 20 min trip by car to the city center with traffic. According to Zillow it sold for about 400k in 2004... Now valued at 1.5 mil.

I do love this area though.
 
GonnaBeADoc2222 said:
Currently on a family trip to San Francisco and Sonoma and I think after this plus a handful of trips to CO and UT that my heart belongs out here.

SF is awesome. Just a really unique city. Great baseball stadium. Might be my favorite US city after this trip. I know they have a homeless problem, but didn't really encounter more homeless than I have in other cities.

Nice to sit amongst the redwoods in Sonoma with my morning coffee.

Too bad the COL is so high and the EM market so poor. Sigh.
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I hope you enjoy yourself. That said, I have never understood the draw, and have to say that SF is probably one of my least favorite cities in the country (insofar as places that one would expect to be nice. I'm obviously not comparing SF to Gary, IN). I just don't get the appeal. You can get similar weather elsewhere. The homes that sell for 1M+ look like they're falling apart. It easily has the most aggressive homeless population I've ever seen. COL is insane. Etc etc etc.

All of that said, I think Sonoma is amazing.

I will also freely admit that I may be an outlier here as I can't imaging living somewhere without proper seasons (hot summers, snowy winters)
 
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BoardingDoc said:
I hope you enjoy yourself. That said, I have never understood the draw, and have to say that SF is probably one of my least favorite cities in the country (insofar as places that one would expect to be nice. I'm obviously not comparing SF to Gary, IN). I just don't get the appeal. You can get similar weather elsewhere. The homes that sell for 1M+ look like they're falling apart. It easily has the most aggressive homeless population I've ever seen. COL is insane. Etc etc etc.

All of that said, I think Sonoma is amazing.

I will also freely admit that I may be an outlier here as I can't imaging living somewhere without proper seasons (hot summers, snowy winters)
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Oh yeah. Infeasible to live. I thought nice to visit. Reasonably clean, great to walk, good eats. Luckily didn't encounter any aggressive homeless.
 
Lots of tech companies going public makes instant millionaires, and also there is a sizable number of foreigners (china especially) buying property in the California and the Bay Area because it's a stable investment.

How can someone be a teacher out here? Making 80K? Some of the economics just doesn't make sense to me.
 
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Imagine trying to be an EP and live in Vancouver.
Or London.
Or Melbourne.

SF has nice weather, if a little foggy. Traffic kinda blows. I'd probably die of wine poisoning.

My new goal is to get everything paid off, get the kids in school, and move somewhere that I could subsist on working+my retirement. Belize, Baja Mexico, Thailand, somewhere. I bet it's doable.
 
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Pay in California outside of the big cities is actually pretty darn good. Still has high COL though. Pay wise you’ll do better in central and Northern California than you will in most parts of the country, which helps make up for the state taxes and absurd housing prices.
 
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With that said, San Diego pay is a sick joke.
 
I don’t like posting actual numbers on a public forum but recent numbers I’ve heard have been about 1/2 of what I would find reasonable. With that said, many sites are single or multi site partnerships (not CMGs) and I imagine the partners do fairly well.
 
DeadCactus said:
Why? I never understood the secrecy around salaries. Seems like it only benefits shoddy employers who want to shortchange employees.
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I’m not a proponent of secrecy, but I don’t think a public forum is the right place to discuss these numbers. Let me try to explain. I’ve seen people on this site that say “I won’t work for less than $200/hr.” And then someone else posts about extreme rates that locums are getting, say, over $300/hr in some desperate rural town in the Midwest. Now let’s say you’re a congressional staffer who is tasked with understanding ER billing. This is a complicated and difficult issue to understand. Your search may involve looking at forums. Then you’ll say ok some ER docs are making $300/hr, well that’s $300/hr x 40 hrs x 52 weeks, holy cow these doctors make over $600k a year! Yes congressman, I support changing billing to lower ER reimbursement. Of course the number is highly inaccurate, doesn’t reflect that the extreme numbers are outliers, are not done at 40hrs/week, that there are substantial costs associated, etc. None of that matters, and the people tasked with “fixing” our billing and reimbursement then overestimate our take home.
If you think this kind of thinking is paranoid, let me assure you that it is not. “Research” by powerful people occurs this way. Publishing hourly numbers in public forums, high or low, is not good for us as it misrepresents ED reimbursement and does not present us in a good light. Even when we’re crapping on San Diego reimbursement.
 
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From what I’ve heard 160-180/hr is the going rate at some of the San Diego shops.
 
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Do we have a place to discuss it privately?
RuralEDDoc said:
I’m not a proponent of secrecy, but I don’t think a public forum is the right place to discuss these numbers. Let me try to explain. I’ve seen people on this site that say “I won’t work for less than $200/hr.” And then someone else posts about extreme rates that locums are getting, say, over $300/hr in some desperate rural town in the Midwest. Now let’s say you’re a congressional staffer who is tasked with understanding ER billing. This is a complicated and difficult issue to understand. Your search may involve looking at forums. Then you’ll say ok some ER docs are making $300/hr, well that’s $300/hr x 40 hrs x 52 weeks, holy cow these doctors make over $600k a year! Yes congressman, I support changing billing to lower ER reimbursement. Of course the number is highly inaccurate, doesn’t reflect that the extreme numbers are outliers, are not done at 40hrs/week, that there are substantial costs associated, etc. None of that matters, and the people tasked with “fixing” our billing and reimbursement then overestimate our take home.
If you think this kind of thinking is paranoid, let me assure you that it is not. “Research” by powerful people occurs this way. Publishing hourly numbers in public forums, high or low, is not good for us as it misrepresents ED reimbursement and does not present us in a good light. Even when we’re crapping on San Diego reimbursement.
Click to expand...
 
RuralEDDoc said:
I’m not a proponent of secrecy, but I don’t think a public forum is the right place to discuss these numbers. Let me try to explain. I’ve seen people on this site that say “I won’t work for less than $200/hr.” And then someone else posts about extreme rates that locums are getting, say, over $300/hr in some desperate rural town in the Midwest. Now let’s say you’re a congressional staffer who is tasked with understanding ER billing. This is a complicated and difficult issue to understand. Your search may involve looking at forums. Then you’ll say ok some ER docs are making $300/hr, well that’s $300/hr x 40 hrs x 52 weeks, holy cow these doctors make over $600k a year! Yes congressman, I support changing billing to lower ER reimbursement. Of course the number is highly inaccurate, doesn’t reflect that the extreme numbers are outliers, are not done at 40hrs/week, that there are substantial costs associated, etc. None of that matters, and the people tasked with “fixing” our billing and reimbursement then overestimate our take home.
If you think this kind of thinking is paranoid, let me assure you that it is not. “Research” by powerful people occurs this way. Publishing hourly numbers in public forums, high or low, is not good for us as it misrepresents ED reimbursement and does not present us in a good light. Even when we’re crapping on San Diego reimbursement.
Click to expand...

I understand dude, but the cat is already out of the bag, playing around, scratching the furniture, and crapping in your kitchen.
 
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RuralEDDoc said:
I’m not a proponent of secrecy, but I don’t think a public forum is the right place to discuss these numbers. Let me try to explain. I’ve seen people on this site that say “I won’t work for less than $200/hr.” And then someone else posts about extreme rates that locums are getting, say, over $300/hr in some desperate rural town in the Midwest. Now let’s say you’re a congressional staffer who is tasked with understanding ER billing. This is a complicated and difficult issue to understand. Your search may involve looking at forums. Then you’ll say ok some ER docs are making $300/hr, well that’s $300/hr x 40 hrs x 52 weeks, holy cow these doctors make over $600k a year! Yes congressman, I support changing billing to lower ER reimbursement. Of course the number is highly inaccurate, doesn’t reflect that the extreme numbers are outliers, are not done at 40hrs/week, that there are substantial costs associated, etc. None of that matters, and the people tasked with “fixing” our billing and reimbursement then overestimate our take home.
If you think this kind of thinking is paranoid, let me assure you that it is not. “Research” by powerful people occurs this way. Publishing hourly numbers in public forums, high or low, is not good for us as it misrepresents ED reimbursement and does not present us in a good light. Even when we’re crapping on San Diego reimbursement.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, thanks for responding.
 
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