Academic Satellites

[Easterly]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

At my program there are satellite facilities staffed by faculty who practice exclusively at that satellite. Some of these don't participate at all in the academic side of things. Not much in the way of clinical research/teaching and certainly no benchwork.

I hadn't noticed until looking for jobs this year where I've discovered that there are actually alot of academic centers hiring to staff satellites.

My question is: Isn't this kind of a raw deal?

I mean, isn't it essentially a private practice work with no opportunity for career development? Aren't you basically just churning out cash so that other faculty can have protected time and go to meetings etc.? I see myself either devoting my career to developing the body of literature or growing my practice, not to just giving the dean more money to play with. I understand that the junior guy has to work his/her way up the ladder, but does anyone think that someone stuck at a satellite hours away from the main campus has any shot at becoming chair or even full professor? If so, I take the academic vs private practice decision to be a false dichotomy.

And what about extreme satellites like Mayo Scottsdale or MD Anderson Orlando?

 

[Adawaal]

Very true. I'm on the interview trail for an academic position myself. Some places contact me about an "academic opportunity," only to end up being staffing a satellite. To be fair, most of these places do say they like to have junior faculty do this for a couple of years before being brought onto the "home site." One prestigious institution bragged about a famous faculty member starting off just like that, "and see how he ended up?"

I can see why some institutions (and too often it's the "elite" Rad Onc departments) do this. It's a way of "paying your dues." It's a way of being inculcated with the organizational culture. It's a way of doing good general Rad Onc to prepare for boards. It's a way to learn quickly how important it is (even in academics) to bow to the referring doc.

I don't have a problem with this system, so long as the department is open and honest about what the "opportunity" really is right from the outset. It's the ones that dangle promises of a traditional academic appointment, only to do the bait and switch routine that anger me.

In the end, a lot of people will take these satellite jobs anyway. First, they get to be staff at the "elite" place, hoping the promise for a real academic position in the future will be kept. Secondly, a LOT of Rad Onc residents who say they want an "academic job" merely don't want the hassles of running a practice, or else they like to teach residents and med students. So few want a true in-depth academic (research-based, K- or R-grants) position. Which is why great departments with 3+ SPOREs are fighting to recruit to academicians right now.

 

[stephew]

Some people like these places because they like the hyrid model; sometimes their income in slightly more and they can partake in excellent leading care but not have the pressure of publish or perish. The balance (the differential in income, teaching, money,autonomy, bonus, clinical administration, etc) is different for all places. But its the balance that people like.

 

[IRISH22]

from your experience on the trail, do they offer profit sharing, or does the $$ from high volume you crank out really go to the dean's coffers?

 

[stephew]

if you want real profit sharing, you should go into private practice. bonuses and the like vary from place to place.

The money doesnt just go into the deans pocket by the way. It can be funneled into research and technology and departmental growth. and the CEOs pocket.

 

[Adawaal]

There as many academic department business models as there are academic departments. Once you start learning how they run, you'd be surprised how sweet some of the are and how pathetically handcuffed other departments are...

 

[j dizzle]

Two questions:

1) Although it's undoubtedly dependent on the practice, how does profit sharing generally affect a Radiation Oncologist? (To put my question in perspective, I have to Wiki "profit sharing" to find out what it was.)

2) How do you find out which departments have "sweet business models"?

 

[xraydude]

I would say very few academic departments have sweet deals. It is the nature of an academic department for the hospital system to do all the collections, pay the staff a salary and a measly bonus, and keep the rest of the profits (more importantly the technicals) go to pay for all the departments that don't make money - ie ID, endocrine and all the other poorly reimbursed medical subsepcialties.

The ones that would pay well, would be where the physicians collect their own professional fees and actually keep them. I'm not sure of any true academic programs that do this. But certainly there are community hospitals that are academically affiliated where residents do rotate through where the docs do their own billing. It would be rarer to find an academic practice that would ever give any technical fees.

my 2 cents