"Buying Back" (i.e., Getting Rid of) Weekend Call from Group
Started by Ubba
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I would very politely ask you to find a position somewhere else.
To give a more concrete answer, it would depend on the average call volume and number of consults/inpatients over the weekend. But my floor would be $50K/yr to do this.
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A typical locums covering a day is 4-6k. So expect to be paying 4-6k a day for that coverage. Including overnight.
15 years ago, when I started at my first job out of fellowship, there was a retired oncologist that covered half of our weekends for the group. He got paid $12,500 for the weekend. If I was doing weekends as locums, I'd ask for $15K+.
To be clear, I meant $50K for every person you're going to have help cover your weekends. So if you're going to completely ditch weekend coverage, and put it back on the other 4 docs in the group, that's at least $200K out of your pocket. And I'd want it upfront, in cash.
Larger groups can be nicer in this regard since, while you may have more to do on call, it's less frequent. In my prior position, we had ~14 docs (varied from 11-16 while I was there, currently the group is at 18 with a plan to hire 2 more). When I joined the group, we covered 7 hospitals on the weekend (but had other groups at most of those places)...that went down to 5 hospitals over time. Some weekends were brutally busy, others were super chill. But since you only had to do it roughly once a quarter, it was worth it to just put on your big boy pants 4x a year and enjoy the other 48 weekends a year that you weren't on call.
It's too early for me to abandon a post I just took, so to speak, but that is a great position! And Champaign isn't some sleepy random town, it's got UIUC, which is a great school.
See, the opportunities out there are great!
As I understand it, this is somewhat more common in the “shift work” specialties like anesthesia.
From personal experience, get everything in writing if the group agrees. In my first practice (private) I was a year in and one of the 4th years left as they didnt make her partner. It was only me left who wasnt a partner and call instead of 1:4, became 1:3 as partners didnt want to do their share. They told me I would be paid 6k for each weekend I covered extra. I did that for almost a year. My salary didnt reflect the increase, when I asked, they told me I was just helping the practice as part of my commitment blah blah blah. I showed them the email that had compensation mentioned, I was told by their legal dept unless an addendum or rider was added to my contract, this doesnt stand. Learned my lesson the hard way.
I did later, they never made partner either, some crap about due to covid we need to extend partner track by 3 years but they were willing to increase my sub 250k salary by 10k a year for the next 3 years instead of making me junior partner and sharing productivity. These older private practices feed on gullible new grads specially in a saturated area. Need to be careful and do your homework with all these jobs. I cant stress enough about putting things in writing always, no gentlemen's agreements and handshakes etc.
This is just absolutely terrible and I'm livid on your behalf
However, you are awesome for sharing it so that others can realize this absolutely still does happen (and isn't just something that happened "back in the day") and learn from it
