what would you consider "bad"?
I understand how RVUs work, but in all fairness C/L is a psych subspecialty that requires extra training and in my mind it would be ideal to receive the same amount of money as a psychiatrist with no extra training doing outpatient.
From what I've heard, a standard full-time outpatient psych job will pay at least 250K in most systems. Depending on how busy the consult service is and the hours required I would say <250K is poor. I understand how RVUs work, but in all fairness C/L is a psych subspecialty that requires extra training and in my mind it would be ideal to receive the same amount of money as a psychiatrist with no extra training doing outpatient. In addition as Splik mentioned a C/L service is basically a discharge service that can save the hospital tons of money. Would it be possible to reach 250K doing 1/2 time consults, 1/2 inpt or outpatient?
You can certainly find many jobs that do pay 250k. Most of my friends are not making 250k and that is well above the national median income for a psychiatrist. I estimate making more than that this year but I have additional sources of revenue beyond my C/L job.From what I've heard, a standard full-time outpatient psych job will pay at least 250K in most systems.
Why do you think there's a bubble specific to psychiatry?At some point the psychiatry compensation bubble is going to burst and income will fall.
Because psychiatrists' income has risen at an unsustainable rate, far outpacing changes seen in primary care and during a time when reimbursement in other specialties (including neurology) were cut. There is a natural ebb and flow in physician salaries over time but the last time psychiatrists' reimbursement was riding high like this was in the 1970s, after which point it precipitously dropped when insurance companies got fed up of not being able to review our records, endless hospitalizations for therapeutic regression, and endless psychoanalysis which at best did little and at worst damaged the patients. The increase in psychiatrists' compensation has primarily been driven by 1) lawsuits in managed care (e.g. Kaiser), corrections, and the VA; 2) changes to mental health CPT codes (transition to E/M codes and the development of "psychotherapy add-on codes"); and 3) increased visibility of so-called "behavioral health" particularly in the medically ill population. This has been coupled with a "demand" created by the ACA (insuring large numbers of people who previously didn't seek care) and the pharmaceutical industry (e.g. convincing people they have adult ADHD).Why do you think there's a bubble specific to psychiatry?
most psychiatrists make <250k/yr. while is certainly very possible to make more than that in psychiatry depending on your flexibility with work, setting, and location, psychiatry is still one of the lowest paying fields and the average psychiatrist is not making 250k.
you have to bear in mind that most hospitals don't have the volume to have full time C/L positions as it is. usually doing consults is considered an additional part of the job (which might be inpatient or outpatients). at larger hospitals the volume would be much greater but many of those hospitals are also academic institutions or academically affiliated and thus they do pay less. of course you might be able to get a cushy job doing C/L and kaiser and get paid very well, but most of the time you would end up working some outpatient as well.
I do C/L psychiatry at a large academic institution. The pay as you can imagine is not high flying but it is fair. We see fewer patients doing C/L and spend longer on coordination of care etc, which means we don't generate as much revenue. RVU models are not a good way of getting remunerated as a C/L psychiatrist. We are cost saving for hospitals by getting patients out and reducing readmissions etc and more creative funding streams need to be negotiated for C/L psychiatrists.
Some outpatient specialized evaluation work can pay decently (e.g. bariatric surgery evals, gender reassignment surgery evals, transplant candidate and live donor evals).
I work pretty hard and supplement my income by various other activities (i.e. expert witness work, consulting etc)
I don't want to discount financial aspects of things. They are obviously an important fact. But if you do what you love, and don't let yourself get exploited, then you can't go wrong. I could work less and make the same or more doing something else but I love what I do, the variety of different activities I do, and feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to do the work that I do.
Because psychiatrists' income has risen at an unsustainable rate, far outpacing changes seen in primary care and during a time when reimbursement in other specialties (including neurology) were cut. There is a natural ebb and flow in physician salaries over time but the last time psychiatrists' reimbursement was riding high like this was in the 1970s, after which point it precipitously dropped when insurance companies got fed up of not being able to review our records, endless hospitalizations for therapeutic regression, and endless psychoanalysis which at best did little and at worst damaged the patients. The increase in psychiatrists' compensation has primarily been driven by 1) lawsuits in managed care (e.g. Kaiser), corrections, and the VA; 2) changes to mental health CPT codes (transition to E/M codes and the development of "psychotherapy add-on codes"); and 3) increased visibility of so-called "behavioral health" particularly in the medically ill population. This has been coupled with a "demand" created by the ACA (insuring large numbers of people who previously didn't seek care) and the pharmaceutical industry (e.g. convincing people they have adult ADHD).
All of the above mean we will at the very least see a plateau (i'm already seeing this) which ultimately equal a fall in income and means that psychiatry is especially vulnerable to things like local budgetary constraints (as psychiatrists are among the highest paid employees of municipal and state governments), CPT code changes, healthcare reform, and the integration of "behavioral health" with the rest of medicine. All of this imho is more significant than psych NPs, rxPs or other bogeymen people get up in arms about.
now you can argue that cash practice is the answer to all this, but I am specifically focusing on employed positions here, and cash practice while much more viable in psych than any other field is still at the mercy of other forces and is not going to be an option for those with the more serious mental health needs.
Interesting/relevant white paper w/r/t psychiatrist salary. Obviously somewhat biased figures -- like MGMA -- in that it's tied to recruiting, but they seem to think there's more to psychiatrist pay increases than just the coding changes / visibility (short term demand.) https://www.merritthawkins.com/uplo...hysician_Incentive_Review_Merritt_Hawkins.pdf
Healthcare economics are always mysterious to me, so forgive me if this is obvious.
How are we saving hospitals money when we do inpatient C/L?
Seems like a decent percent of consults end up with us saying please don’t discharge that suicidal or floridly psychotic patient and then they sit with a 1:1 sitter on some super pissed off medical service for days until they can get inpatient psychiatric care somewhere. I can’t imagine the hospital is making any money from that.
Quality conversation. I don't think we'll see a big drop in salary anytime soon, especially with the media decrying a lack of mental health care every time there is a shooting and as long as patriotic public opinion is driving improved mental health care in the VA. Just my opinion.
Also, Psychiatrist pay in the VA is capped by law at $264k since 2014, so that actually isn't driving up salaries for psychiatrists. Congress talks the talk of helping more veterans but doesn't fully back it up. VA pay scale for Psychiatrists may unintentionally set a benchmark for some employers, I don't know. I do know psychiatrists avoid working for the VA due to perceived low pay and high bureaucracy and paperwork burden.
well you do realize that only jobs that pay higher tend to tell you how much they pay which skews things. also the midwest is one of the lower paying parts of the country nowadays so im not sure where this idea you'll be making 350k there in a typical job comes from. you won't.FYI, outside of Northeast, I haven't seen a job offer less than 250k. In fact, the majority of job offers in most of the country is 250-300k, and I would say the median is probably 270k (outside of Northeast). And if you are happy with small town Midwest, 350k is very doable.
I don't know enough about AMGA to comment on them, but MGMA and Merrit Hawkins--and any other data pulled from recruiters / recruiting firms (or, heck, listings that advertise salary)--are inherently going to be skewed toward higher salary. The point is that they are hard-to-fill jobs.As a side note, I don't see why MGMA salaries are any more biased than the other reports out there. Sure they have a bit of a selection bias as the primary respondents are from mid-sized groups, but their results correlate very well year after year with AMGA survey results that don't have that bias. MGMA and AMGA are the two biggest surveys making them more reliable than most.
there is a difference between making money and saving money. if your suicidal patient jumps from the rooftop of the hospital (as happened at several places ive worked) that is an enormous payout. they are quite happy to have the damn sitter watch the patient even though the nurses bitterly complain about it. there is nothing like a patient suicide or delirious patient tumbling to their death from the stairwell to focus the minds of the administrators and demand a C/L service with a director.Healthcare economics are always mysterious to me, so forgive me if this is obvious.
How are we saving hospitals money when we do inpatient C/L?
Seems like a decent percent of consults end up with us saying please don’t discharge that suicidal or floridly psychotic patient and then they sit with a 1:1 sitter on some super pissed off medical service for days until they can get inpatient psychiatric care somewhere. I can’t imagine the hospital is making any money from that.
Mind if I ask what you specialize in and what it takes to make that kind of money in psychiatry?
My best advice is to become a unicorn. I reached powerful people in high places, gods of the heavens. As for the type of unicorn to become.....
Is this SDN or the Fantasy Games Forum? 🙂
That sounds real nice. Do you know if that is only for fellowship trained CL docs? Are they doing other administrative duties like running a fellowship?
And being a unicorn doesn't have to be so grandiose. I met a guy who has a half-time high-ranking academic position who spends maybe 500-1000 hours a year doing family therapy with anorexics at $500/hr. It's not like he created a new field or had to meet socialites to develop this practice. In other words, it's possible to become a "unicorn" by the combination of otherwise uncommon (but not unique or inconceivable) traits e.g. academic credential, high SES patient population, specific focus in fellowship-gated field.This is getting out of hand. How did every other thread turn into how can I be a shrink and clear half a mil thread??? LOL
And just to be clear, you don't need to be a unicorn and know "gods of the heavens" and clear half a mil. I suspect, for example, TexasPhysician and Michaelrack both get somewhere close to that but they stay below the radar...as they should be...
And being a unicorn doesn't have to be so grandiose. I met a guy who has a half-time high-ranking academic position who spends maybe 500-1000 hours a year doing family therapy with anorexics at $500/hr. It's not like he created a new field or had to meet socialites to develop this practice. In other words, it's possible to become a "unicorn" by the combination of otherwise uncommon (but not unique or inconceivable) traits e.g. academic credential, high SES patient population, specific focus in fellowship-gated field.
Maybe SoCal does performance coaching or other concierge stuff for people with recognizable names. Someone who recently graduated from my residency program chose to focus on performance coaching/therapy. It's not impossible to identify these interests and gain relevant experience during residency.
It helps to be in a large metro / academic center with a lot of loosely affiliated folk who stick around in the area--that way you can potentially get supervision from people with a similar niche. Part of it is just asking for patients who fit a specific demographic to take on your outpatient panel in 3rd/4th year.How does one get into one of those niches; i.e. performance therapy? I'm assuming most programs don't have a ton of exposure to this aspect of pscyhiatry.
Strictly clinical position as far as I know, but medical students and residents rotate on to the service, so some education stuff would be a part of the work. Built into that compensation are bonuses for being fellowship-trained, so the salary wouldn’t be the same for a generalist doing C/L work.
650K. That's achievable. And I specialize. And I make it home in time to pick up my child from school almost every day (3pm). I realize I'm the extreme exception. You have to be in high demand, be very savvy, in the right place at the right time, with very good networking and negotiating skills. I'm not in C/L, but since this thread took a turn into what psychiatrists can make, I wanted to give some perspective.
Yeah, this is the case here, too - there’s just a general bonus for every fellowship board certification you hold if you join the faculty, irrespective of whether or not the fellowship has any actual relevance to the work that you’re doing.Good news is quite often these academic built-in "fellowship-trained" bonuses are pretty flexible and aren't limited to C/L fellowships.
And being a unicorn doesn't have to be so grandiose. I met a guy who has a half-time high-ranking academic position who spends maybe 500-1000 hours a year doing family therapy with anorexics at $500/hr. It's not like he created a new field or had to meet socialites to develop this practice. In other words, it's possible to become a "unicorn" by the combination of otherwise uncommon (but not unique or inconceivable) traits e.g. academic credential, high SES patient population, specific focus in fellowship-gated field.
Maybe SoCal does performance coaching or other concierge stuff for people with recognizable names. Someone who recently graduated from my residency program chose to focus on performance coaching/therapy. It's not impossible to identify these interests and gain relevant experience during residency.
How does one get into one of those niches; i.e. performance therapy? I'm assuming most programs don't have a ton of exposure to this aspect of pscyhiatry.
Oh I hoped the "And.." would come across as "in addition." That is, in addition to playing the volume/payer/business owner game, it's not as difficult to do niche as SoCal implied.You are missing my point, and I think your point is misleading to trainees. Frankly I don't think this is how typically someone makes 400-500k in psych. I have no doubt of the veracity of your story, but I think many many many more psychiatrists in the community make 500k than the ones doing this kind of "unicorn" practice.
It's really not that complex: you want to bill approximately $400+ per hour and work around 30 clinical hours. Depending on the payer mix and patient population, you might burn out quickly by seeing mostly insurance patients, or not if you see cash for therapy. Things fill up quickly or slowly depending on your niche (i.e. sleep, addiction, child etc.). 99214+90833 ~ $170, bill 2-3 per hour and you are done. The best value in psych is still outpatient subspecialty psychopharm.
High end cash is not the be all end all in making money. For example, in big markets, there are some insurance taking MDs who have a panel of NP helpers, and these group owners probably make more than your garden variety Wilshire Blvd UCLA trained high end cash. The advantage of high end cash is low overhead, low hassle, and high per hour yield. At the end of the day, you make more money when you have people who work for you even when you are not working. High end cash is the opposite of that philosophy -- it focuses on the uniqueness, "boutique quality", "high quality" of the patient-doctor relationship. But even people without a name brand residency or "unicorn" skills can build a high volume practice and hire NP helpers if they are business savvy and/or willing to learn, and as time go on they can make really good money.
No cash practice here. Was. Not anymore. I do like the festive speculation though. Unicorn practice... love it. Which becomes a bloody time suck. I don't sit in an office and wait for capitalists to come riding in. Performance therapy? No, no, god no.