...residents who moonlight in general (though they have a lot of options)
-either already have a full license and purchase their own malpractice
-or arrange a favorable circumstance through their own health system and are covered through their resident malpractice
-obviously other options exist
In a lot of places, malpractice insurance is actually not required for seeing patients (although most of those require the doc to have a proof of high net worth in liquid assets). Any hospital will require you have malpractice to be on staff (otherwise they know they would just have 100% liability to defend any case the doc causes... they want to dump most/all liability on the docs on staff, not just the facility). Most payers might require coverage for the provider to participate also. Nonetheless, for just seeing patients in a moonlighting scenario of house calls or nursing home or office, malpractice is not a firm req in many states. It can be done legally in a lot of places even if the podiatry group's plan doesn't cover the moonlighter either... although a well-run SNF or ECF might require the doc to have a policy.
The loophole is simply that the moonlighter(s) are
technically a fully-licensed attending who joined as part of the group to do some work. That lets their work be billed under the group on a temporary basis. On the up and up? No. Illegal? Gray area in most places (assuming there was some minor intent of the podiatry group to potentially retain the hired podiatry moonlighter and sign them up for the payers eventually, ie residency graduation). It is just like how a 4th year ER or OB resident can cover inpatient nocturnist shifts or do some Urgent Care side hustle on their set of days off if they want (fully state licensed, services are billed by the hospital/UC, malpractice assumed via hospital/UC... treated similar to locums docs but with only a tiny fraction of the pay).
The billing concerns are legit if the moonlighting goes on for more than a short term. I would assume that nearly all DPMs moonlighting are billing for their services (or the group/hiring doc is) under the group/business NPI they are working with. That is acceptable in most places (just like it is for locums) if they are considered a purely temp doc or a new hire and in process of getting onto the plans them self (a process they'll never actually complete - and probably won't even start - if it is just temp work, a la locums). If they are just billing under a different doc (instead of the "new hire" under group NPI) for an extended timespan, then that's obviously not ideal.
...Like I said, I think it's a generally bad idea all around. Those hours you might spend making a couple hundred per half day doing nursing homes are usually better spent doing almost anything else during residency (studying, looking for jobs, scrubbing more cases, learning billing with good attending office rotations, reading for personal enrichment, fitness, recreation, travel, etc etc). Besides, that same work can be done as an attending on weekends or days off for MUCH higher rates if the cash is a real high priority. Everyone's situation is different, though.
I had a 20-30+ hour per week job during 2nd and 3rd years of pod school (but none during residency), and while I saved some loans and got some good exp from the extra work, it was not very wise in hindsight. I would have been better off just sleeping better and studying more instead. Whatever tiny bit I gained financially and socially was probably easily negated in slightly lowered class rank, stress and subpar sleep from working weekends and being called in the middle of some nights, missed workouts, stress eating from burning the candle at both ends, etc. It's all a learning exp, though.
