CNN Article - Psychologists to Strike

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Heist said:
Then why didn't these Kaiser people do it that way too?
Click to expand...

A nursing strike is apples and oranges to a psychologist/therapist strike. The impact of a nursing strike is exponentially greater than that of the MH provider strike in the short term. Takes longer to cause disruption and pain with the latter.
 
Heist said:
Then why didn't these Kaiser people do it that way too?
Click to expand...
You seem unable to understand the meaning of the concept of false equivalency. Kaiser NEEDS nurses to stay open. It does not need (or want, apparently) mental health providers except perhaps a few Psychiatrists to pass out meds.

Is this really that hard to comprehend?
 
Well, more accurately, I imagine Kaiser wants to stop losing as much money on MH services that they currently likely are. That's teh part that is not hard to understand, most people can understand not wanting to hemorrhage money.
 
Pragma said:
Physician salaries also appear lower overall relative to the US

www.bmj.com

The complete guide to NHS pay for doctors

How much do doctors earn in different roles across the UK? An NHS doctor’s salary is more complicated than it might at first appear and varies according to grade, years in role, and where in the UK the job is based. NHS pay is reviewed annually by the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’...
www.bmj.com www.bmj.com
Click to expand...

Should be considered in the context of other UK salaries. £100K is like what 94ile or something. It’s not like they don’t pay but reletive to other Britons.
 
Fpg1245 said:
Should be considered in the context of other UK salaries. £100K is like what 94ile or something. It’s not like they don’t pay but reletive to other Britons.
Click to expand...

Additionally, UK physicians:

1) Have substantially lower tuition, by law.
2) Get their medical degree in 5 years, after high school. Because....
3) They do not have doctorates. They are awarded a bachelor's in medicine, bachelor's in surgery.
 
PsyDr said:
Additionally, UK physicians:

1) Have substantially lower tuition, by law.
2) Get their medical degree in 5 years, after high school. Because....
3) They do not have doctorates. They are awarded a bachelor's in medicine, bachelor's in surgery.
Click to expand...

Much like VA employees, they also do not need to concern themselves with medical malpractice insurance individually for NHS work.
 
Sanman said:
Much like VA employees, they also do not need to concern themselves with medical malpractice insurance individually for NHS work.
Click to expand...

Meh, liability insurance is pretty cheap, especially when you factor in increased pay and that the insurance premiums are a business expense.
 
Heist said:
Depends on the state and what you are doing in your practice as a physician
Click to expand...
This right here was why i was told to avoid medicine when i was considering going that route circa 2004ish. Every physician i talked with brought up insurance. What i pay now as a psych is nothing to what i heard they were paying and that was 20 years ago.
 
BuckeyeLove said:
This right here was why i was told to avoid medicine when i was considering going that route circa 2004ish. Every physician i talked with brought up insurance. What i pay now as a psych is nothing to what i heard they were paying and that was 20 years ago.
Click to expand...

Depends on what you do, but always far worse than us. We are usually in the $500-1000 range for solo practice. Psychiatry in the $5-10k range from what I have read. OBGYN in the 50K-100k range easy from what I have read.
 
PsyDr said:
Additionally, UK physicians:

1) Have substantially lower tuition, by law.
2) Get their medical degree in 5 years, after high school. Because....
3) They do not have doctorates. They are awarded a bachelor's in medicine, bachelor's in surgery.
Click to expand...
6 years, but their post-graduate work is longer than ours generally speaking so the time from high school to full practice is about the same.

The tuition is a huge thing though.
 
VA Hopeful Dr said:
6 years, but their post-graduate work is longer than ours generally speaking so the time from high school to full practice is about the same.

The tuition is a huge thing though.
Click to expand...

It’s 5 years at the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, etc.

Post graduate work is:

1) increasingly shorter, with the old registrar system being radically changed over the last 20 years.

2) paid, with income approximating the median salary for the country. Therefore paid work starts at 23-24, representing 2 years of lost income as opposed to the US’ 4 years while interest is accumulating.
 
PsyDr said:
It’s 5 years at the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, etc.

Post graduate work is:

1) increasingly shorter, with the old registrar system being radically changed over the last 20 years.

2) paid, with income approximating the median salary for the country. Therefore paid work starts at 23-24, representing 2 years of lost income as opposed to the US’ 4 years while interest is accumulating.
Click to expand...
Looking at GPs (since that's what I would be over there), its still a minimum of 3 years after the 2 Foundation Years. So 10 years post high school compared to 11 here.

I also randomly picked cardiology. 2 years Foundation and then 8 years specialty training as of this year. So 15 years post high school compared to 14 for us. I don't know if those 8 years for them would allow you to be an interventional cardiologist/EP or not. If so, then it is the same length as here. If not we're still shorter.

The 5 year medical school is new to me (but does appear widespread), it looks like it has fairly stringent course requirements in their version of high school so it looks similar to the 6 year programs we have here.

The 2 years of lost income is more than made up by the salary differences between here and there as full physicians (we also get paid a decent bit more as residents than they do in Foundation years and more than at least early years in specialty training).

The biggest difference really is tuition since as of looking at NHS websites about an hour ago total training time after high school seems about the same in the handful of fields I looked at.
 
VA Hopeful Dr said:
Looking at GPs (since that's what I would be over there), its still a minimum of 3 years after the 2 Foundation Years. So 10 years post high school compared to 11 here.

I also randomly picked cardiology. 2 years Foundation and then 8 years specialty training as of this year. So 15 years post high school compared to 14 for us. I don't know if those 8 years for them would allow you to be an interventional cardiologist/EP or not. If so, then it is the same length as here. If not we're still shorter.

The 5 year medical school is new to me (but does appear widespread), it looks like it has fairly stringent course requirements in their version of high school so it looks similar to the 6 year programs we have here.

The 2 years of lost income is more than made up by the salary differences between here and there as full physicians (we also get paid a decent bit more as residents than they do in Foundation years and more than at least early years in specialty training).

The biggest difference really is tuition since as of looking at NHS websites about an hour ago total training time after high school seems about the same in the handful of fields I looked at.
Click to expand...

Yeah I don’t think you’re really getting over on one training scheme versus another. The trade offs probably nullify any perceived advantages.
 
VA Hopeful Dr said:
Looking at GPs (since that's what I would be over there), its still a minimum of 3 years after the 2 Foundation Years. So 10 years post high school compared to 11 here.

I also randomly picked cardiology. 2 years Foundation and then 8 years specialty training as of this year. So 15 years post high school compared to 14 for us. I don't know if those 8 years for them would allow you to be an interventional cardiologist/EP or not. If so, then it is the same length as here. If not we're still shorter.

The 5 year medical school is new to me (but does appear widespread), it looks like it has fairly stringent course requirements in their version of high school so it looks similar to the 6 year programs we have here.

The 2 years of lost income is more than made up by the salary differences between here and there as full physicians (we also get paid a decent bit more as residents than they do in Foundation years and more than at least early years in specialty training).

The biggest difference really is tuition since as of looking at NHS websites about an hour ago total training time after high school seems about the same in the handful of fields I looked at.
Click to expand...
Physicians from other countries come to America to practice so then they are way ahead!
 
Heist said:
Yes if their full undergrad and med is only 5 or 6 years
Click to expand...
My experience obviously isn't universal, but I have met very few foreign born and trained physicians who didn't do post-graduate training in the home country before coming over here. Maybe its more common than I realize but with literally 1 exception everyone I know didn't come here straight after med school.

Plus since they are here on Visas they are usually in less desirable locations or notoriously abusive residencies.
 
VA Hopeful Dr said:
My experience obviously isn't universal, but I have met very few foreign born and trained physicians who didn't do post-graduate training in the home country before coming over here. Maybe its more common than I realize but with literally 1 exception everyone I know didn't come here straight after med school.

Plus since they are here on Visas they are usually in less desirable locations or notoriously abusive residencies.
Click to expand...
Nowadays I have seen people go to places like Ireland just for the school and then come to the us for residency. And the location or residency has nothing to do with the time and lack of loans I was referring to in terms of being ahead of a us grad
 
Heist said:
Nowadays I have seen people go to places like Ireland just for the school and then come to the us for residency. And the location or residency has nothing to do with the time and lack of loans I was referring to in terms of being ahead of a us grad
Click to expand...
Sure it does. I'd rather have loans than have to do residency in certain places.

Plus in Ireland of you're a US citizen tuition is about the same as we pay here.
 
VA Hopeful Dr said:
Sure it does. I'd rather have loans than have to do residency in certain places.

Plus in Ireland of you're a US citizen tuition is about the same as we pay here.
Click to expand...
Many residencies have fmgs in them. Not all residencies they get are bad. And regarding Ireland it's still fewer years so you can start practicing sooner too and have less years of tuition
 
Heist said:
Many residencies have fmgs in them. Not all residencies they get are bad. And regarding Ireland it's still fewer years so you can start practicing sooner too and have less years of tuition
Click to expand...
Sure, but as an FMG/IMG you have a harder time matching in general and much harder matching in good places. This is especially true if you're here on a visa since many residency programs don't mess with those at all.

Looking at Ireland, its 5-6 years if you don't have an undergraduate degree. So let's do some rough math here. In my state if I did a 4 year degree at a state undergrad and then 4 years of med school, tuition costs alone for both would be around 230k. A 5 year degree at UC Dublin medical school for a foreign grad would run 265k for the duration. So yes, you do finish earlier but with more money spent on the tuition overall. Incidentally, that undergrad tuition here would be a good bit less due to scholarships (SC has a 5k/year scholarship that everyone is eligible for and if you have the grades to be competitive for med school it will be very easy to keep it) plus any specific merit based stuff most of us could get at the undergrad level at state schools. So that 230k would likely be 20-40k less.

Now if you're an Irish citizen who gets free med school and then has no issue getting a solid residency over here, that has the potential to be a pretty sweet gig. But there's a reason we don't see all that many people doing that.
 
Last edited:
Kaiser MH clinicians in Hawaii have been on strike since mid August. (!!!)

www.hawaiipublicradio.org

Kaiser mental health workers have been on strike for over 70 days

Kaiser staff on strike want higher wages and better benefits to increase their retention rate. They also asked Kaiser to hire more therapists to meet the demand of patients who need mental health care.
www.hawaiipublicradio.org www.hawaiipublicradio.org
 
AbnormalPsych said:
Kaiser MH clinicians in Hawaii have been on strike since mid August. (!!!)

www.hawaiipublicradio.org

Kaiser mental health workers have been on strike for over 70 days

Kaiser staff on strike want higher wages and better benefits to increase their retention rate. They also asked Kaiser to hire more therapists to meet the demand of patients who need mental health care.
www.hawaiipublicradio.org www.hawaiipublicradio.org
Click to expand...

And clearly it is so effective that they are still on strike and those of us that were even aware it was happening forgot about it. I'm all for higher wages, but not sure that is going to fix anything in a place like Hawaii.
 
Sanman said:
And clearly it is so effective that they are still on strike and those of us that were even aware it was happening forgot about it. I'm all for higher wages, but not sure that is going to fix anything in a place like Hawaii.
Click to expand...
Except that it worked it Northern California and it took a long time there too.
 
msc545 said:
Except that it worked it Northern California and it took a long time there too.
Click to expand...

True. However, CA has a large mental health workforce already. Things like salary increases due the high cost of living there to make positions competitive with options like private practice make sense. Hawaii has a much smaller mental health workforce that is not likely to be evenly distributed among the islands there. Kaiser has much less power to affect those issues than the ones in CA.
 
I think this might be true but I also think it is beside the point.
 
Sanman said:
True. However, CA has a large mental health workforce already. Things like salary increases due the high cost of living there to make positions competitive with options like private practice make sense. Hawaii has a much smaller mental health workforce that is not likely to be evenly distributed among the islands there. Kaiser has much less power to affect those issues than the ones in CA.
Click to expand...
But they (CA) are also so oversaturated with providers that finding people to do the work for less is easier, right? One of the issues in desirable locations.
 
Pragma said:
But they (CA) are also so oversaturated with providers that finding people to do the work for less is easier, right? One of the issues in desirable locations.
Click to expand...

That also depends on the local competition, but yes. Which is why I think it made more sense to strike in CA than Hawaii. It is easier to commute or relocate in CA as well. Hawaii is more of a double edged sword. Harder to find new workers, but even more difficult to change jobs. They can get more pay, but additional workforce will be a much larger issue.
 
Sanman said:
That also depends on the local competition, but yes. Which is why I think it made more sense to strike in CA than Hawaii. It is easier to commute or relocate in CA as well. Hawaii is more of a double edged sword. Harder to find new workers, but even more difficult to change jobs. They can get more pay, but additional workforce will be a much larger issue.
Click to expand...
California is now paying California prices for psychiatrist to work from their state with a Cali license online. Tele opened up a lot.
 
www.geisinger.org

Kaiser Permanente and Geisinger come together to launch Risant Health

OAKLAND, Calif. and DANVILLE, Penn., April 26, 2023 – In an innovative move designed to improve the health of communities, achieve better health care outcomes, and improve health care affordability, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Geisinger Health are announcing the launch of Risant Health and a...
www.geisinger.org www.geisinger.org

I just saw this pop up on my feed and I’m horrified about this acquisition after reading through this thread.
 
neurotic_cow said:
www.geisinger.org

Kaiser Permanente and Geisinger come together to launch Risant Health

OAKLAND, Calif. and DANVILLE, Penn., April 26, 2023 – In an innovative move designed to improve the health of communities, achieve better health care outcomes, and improve health care affordability, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Geisinger Health are announcing the launch of Risant Health and a...
www.geisinger.org www.geisinger.org

I just saw this pop up on my feed and I’m horrified about this acquisition after reading through this thread.
Click to expand...

Theres so much double speak and buzzwords packed into this it really doesn't say anything. I am completely stunned and also horrified by this development. This will be approved ofcourse and also disgusting. I feel sorry for the people of PA and the doctors who work there who work in this broadly underserved area. Im sure theyll be taking paycut and asked to do more. Anybody nearing retirement should consider leaving.
 
AbnormalPsych said:
What does any of that even mean? They just trying to distance themelves from future legal issues and farm out work?
Click to expand...

Fpg1245 said:
Theres so much double speak and buzzwords packed into this it really doesn't say anything. I am completely stunned and also horrified by this development. This will be approved ofcourse and also disgusting. I feel sorry for the people of PA and the doctors who work there who work in this broadly underserved area. Im sure theyll be taking paycut and asked to do more. Anybody nearing retirement should consider leaving.
Click to expand...

It means Geisinger is hurting after the $842 million loss in 2022 and I am sure Kaiser bought them cheap. I definitely would not want to work there though. Shame as Geisinger seemed like a good system other than the location.
 
Sanman said:
It means Geisinger is hurting after the $842 million loss in 2022 and I am sure Kaiser bought them cheap. I definitely would not want to work there though. Shame as Geisinger seemed like a good system other than the location.
Click to expand...
All these hospitals are merging and becoming monopolies
 
Sanman said:
It means Geisinger is hurting after the $842 million loss in 2022 and I am sure Kaiser bought them cheap. I definitely would not want to work there though. Shame as Geisinger seemed like a good system other than the location.
Click to expand...

I did some of my training at Geisinger and it really was a great system for a long time. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. It doesn’t sound like it’ll be a good thing from what I read about Kaiser.
 
Heist said:
Yes psych is a money loser for hospitals. Cards, Ortho etc make much more money
Click to expand...
No one is private practice is losing money with a full caseload that is much smaller than what Kaiser (as an example) is doing. The overhead for any treatment at a large hospital is so high that traditional psychotherapy is not going to cut the mustard. Perhaps they need to rethink the infrastructure of mental health services rather than trying to make mental health fit into the same infrastructure as other health treatments.
 
DynamicDidactic said:
No one is private practice is losing money with a full caseload that is much smaller than what Kaiser (as an example) is doing. The overhead for any treatment at a large hospital is so high that traditional psychotherapy is not going to cut the mustard. Perhaps they need to rethink the infrastructure of mental health services rather than trying to make mental health fit into the same infrastructure as other health treatments.
Click to expand...
They won't. All those workers have to get their benefits. And the other fields are so much more profitable for the space given.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

M
Another Kaiser strike ?
Replies
36
Views
3K
msc545
M
N
VA hiring psychologists again
Replies
31
Views
5K
AcronymAllergy
AcronymAllergy
P
Masters vs. Doctoral-Licensed Psychologist
Replies
2
Views
1K
PsyDr
PsyDr
CuriousHedgehog
EPPP Changes-What Happens to Licensed Psychologists Moving Between States?
Replies
9
Views
2K
R. Matey
R. Matey
DynamicDidactic
American Psychologist article about (not needing) exposure
Replies
29
Views
3K
MCParent
MCParent
Top