consolidated special pays

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epidural man

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I missed this AM's brief on the topic.

Can anyone explain the new plan?

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Things not covered or that he couldn't answer definitively: how much we will be paid, when we will be paid, when we can apply for it, and whether or not admin people are eligible for this bonus if they see no patients.

He was pretty definitive, though, that no one will need to extend their obligation to get this pay in their last year. So that's good for people getting out. Also you now absolutely cannot take retention bonus if you have any education bonus if you haven't paid off your obligation for education, so another great reason not to go to USUHS or ROTC. You CAN take the bonus for a training obligation like fellowship, so that loophole is still there.

Finally the board cert pay rate is now universal, regardless of whether you a neurosurgeon with 20 years experience or a dietician straight out of college. So big raise for non doctors. VSP definitely drops, so big pay cut for residents.

If the ISP portion of incentive pay stays the same (big if) it sounds like it will be a small but real pay raise for practicing physicians, a huge pay raise for physicians in their last year who were planning to skip their last year of ISP, and a pay cut for residents.
 
@perrot: he is overselling the issue with signing retention bonuses at 8 years for USUHS/ROTC/etc. For the vast, vast majority of folks this will have no impact (and unless they change the verbiage from the DOD instruction that was just updated in June it won't effect anybody). The only people it would effect if they truly take out the 8 years of creditable service folks would be USNA/ROTC --> USUHS. If you go to USUHS your payback is 7 years so you are already less than 8, if you do USNA/ROTC to USUHS you get to 12 which does put you beyond the 8; HOWEVER, it says pre commissioning education I believe which to me would not include USUHS or HPSP time since you are already commissioned at that point.

I'm sure they will try to say "commissioned as a LT" or some other nonsense, but that's not how it's written in the presentations. I have asked him for clarification on this in relation to the DOD instruction that already discussed the new CSP and he wasn't able to reconcile the difference. This is definitely one area that I'm "waiting to see it in writing".

And it's not a small pay raise for practicing physicians. It's a $0.01 per month raise for about 8 years and a ~$40 loss per month for about six years and at the very end (over 20 yrs of service) a ~$40 pay raise per month for those. For those training in a specialty where you don't get board certified for 1+ yr after residency completion it can be an (comparative to today) loss of 10+ thousand dollars over those years if you did a GMO tour. If you didn't have to do a GMO tour it is possible to have a (comparative to today) increase of several thousand dollars. Those who go out to do GMO tours are the real losers in this change.

So much nuance is in this that I don't think the people involved even thought about all the iterations.

In all the other versions of his presentation (I've seen 3 now) he has always said the exec med folks will continue to get the bonuses as they do now, not sure if something has changed but I can only imagine the fallout if that actually happened. My guess is it would be waiver after waiver after waiver for all those folks to continue to get the bonus.


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Is there a breakdown of what the actual pays are. Like VSP how much per month? Or MSAP, etc?

No, not officially, because that will come from the actual instruction and apparently could change from the proposed instruction as it is routed.

If nothing changes from the proposed then the VSP essentially becomes a flat 8k per year, Board cert is a flat 6k per year. No change in amounts for specialty pay.


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I am bummed that they did not take this chance to adjust the specialty bonuses in any way given how long they gone unchanged...even to adjust for SOME inflation over the last 20 years. I realize that is expecting too much but apparently they sought out proposals from the consultants on changing the specialty specific pays and then likely lit them all on fire I imagine.
 
looks like payment will be delayed since it's perfectly fine to pay providers late:

http://www.med.navy.mil/bumed/Special_Pay/Pages/default.aspx

"17 Aug 2016: Special Pays effective 1 Oct 2016 cannot be submitted at this time until the FY17 NAVADMIN is released, which is expected to be late Oct to early Nov. The only authorized special pays able to be submitted for effective 1 Oct 2016, once the NAVADMIN is released, will be Consolidated Special Pays, which are discussed below. Any questions should be directed to your command Special Pays Coordinator or the email address below."
 
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