Hospitalist: partnerships, equity, potential salaries

[donkeykong1]

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I've been looking at recruitment listings just to get an idea and have come across a few things I wasnt sure about:

1-Do most groups offer a track to partnership after x number of yrs?

2-Do the larger hospitalist groups offer some sort of stakeholder or equity option?

3-When groups advertise with a base of 240k with potential of 320k, how often do internists reach this potential, is it even viable?

 

[nope80]

bump

 

[donkeykong1]

double bump

 

[Tapatiuh]

Triple bump.

 

[johnsmith130077]

bump to the power of infinity

 

[michaelrack]

3-When groups advertise with a base of 240k with potential of 320k, how often do internists reach this potential, is it even viable?

I am not a hospitalist, but do know a little about physician salaries. $ above base salary could be earned by 1) working extra shifts/call and/or 2) Based on productivity (either collections or RVU's)

 

[zeloc]

I've been looking at recruitment listings just to get an idea and have come across a few things I wasnt sure about:

1-Do most groups offer a track to partnership after x number of yrs?

2-Do the larger hospitalist groups offer some sort of stakeholder or equity option?

3-When groups advertise with a base of 240k with potential of 320k, how often do internists reach this potential, is it even viable?

I think it would make more sense to finish residency, your picture of the landscape will change dramatically. I also would not choose a specialty based on money, I know people who have and have ended up unhappy, including one who did a fellowship in a different field after residency. That is a lot of time to spend.

1. I'm not sure what you mean by partnership as it refers to a hospitalist. Partnership generally occurs in outpatient practices. Hospitalists can be employees of a hospital in which case partnership doesn't make sense, but even in the case of physician groups, there is no "partnership." If you become director of a group then you may receive some additional compensation, but it's based on additional administrative work. If you imagine a group with 30 hospitalists, there can only be 1 director, so how could they offer anything to anyone after x years?

2. Again, question does not make sense.

3. No one is paid for not doing anything. If someone makes 320k and someone else makes 240k, then the one who is making $320 has provided additional value of $80,000 and is being compensated for it. Whoever is in the top 5% of income is working like a dog. Is it worth it to be in that group? It's no different than being CEO of a major company, if you're not exceptionally talented and work enormously hard, you are not going to get there. In the case of medicine, you won't have to be enormously talented but you will have to work very hard. There are definitely people making 320k. You may also have to see excessive numbers of patients in a shift. With the recent duty hour restrictions you will probably not have more than 10 pts on your list at any time. Get a sense of how busy it is but then contrast that with seeing 20 pts/day as an attending, potentially without residents.

 

[mrpankration]

Partnership tracks are certainly available for some but not all hospitalist groups. Where I practice in Northern California, 2 of the largest medical groups, which are multi-specialty groups that include hospitalists, offer partnership usually after 2-3 yrs. The thing to be aware of is that they often require a buy in, which can be as high as 50-60K. Not all groups require a buy in. With respect to a hospitalist having the potential of earning 320k per year, while it certainly is not the norm, there are jobs out there that advertise this. As an example of what you have to do for this type of money though, one job I looked at required you to round on about 14 pts daily while doing about 8 admissions daily. Their base was 201K but with all of the productivity bonuses, apparently their hospitalists were making 300-350K. Not the kind of job I want. I would rather make less and provide quality care to my patients. Like the above poster said, you want this kind of money, you will certainly work very hard to get it and likely provide substandard care in the process.