How can Podiatry help with the Covid-19 response?

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I always thought being in any branch of medicine was recession proof. Can't easily outsource healthcare. If this goes on for 12+ months I could easily see being furloughed or let go. My numbers are way down.
 
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DYK343 said:
I always thought being in any branch of medicine was recession proof. Can't easily outsource healthcare. If this goes on for 12+ months I could easily see being furloughed or let go. My numbers are way down.
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My hospital has furloughed most of my MSG by 50% or more to keep it from going bankrupt. The place was already struggling before this. Fortunately I was spared because I’m still seeing 15-20 patients a day and dealing with inpatient infections and fractures. We have a robust screening practice to get into our medical building for clinic so I’ve felt comfortable seeing and treating patients plus I wear my N95 mask all day


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dtrack22 said:
Since air bud owes me about $60k (lol no means testing huh?), I’ll go double or nothing. I bet that significantly more grads than usual are scrambling at the moment and can’t find employment. Anyone who had not signed their contract with a podiatry practice as of a few weeks ago, isn’t going to be signing one any time soon. For those who have, I would love to hear if the practice is trying to weasel out of the contract at the moment. C’mon folks, someone has to have some stories from current 3rd year residents. I’m booooored. Entertain us.
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Yea that's me. Had a private practice job in a great location. low cost of living, he was actually paying me a base salary I was happy with. Contract has been signed sealed delivered for months. Calls me < 2 weeks into the outbreak and tells me there is no way he can meet the salary that we agreed upon because his volume is down to about 25%. Says I can come and work for 33% of collections and take out a loan until they start coming in. I've decided I'm going to be a stay at home father until this blows over as my wife has a rock solid job. No need to rush into some ridiculous panic agreement. I really can't see anyone signing a reasonable contract in the next 6 months unless you are an ED or ICU doc
 
Sartorius P.O.D. said:
Yea that's me. Had a private practice job in a great location. low cost of living, he was actually paying me a base salary I was happy with. Contract has been signed sealed delivered for months. Calls me < 2 weeks into the outbreak and tells me there is no way he can meet the salary that we agreed upon because his volume is down to about 25%. Says I can come and work for 33% of collections and take out a loan until they start coming in. I've decided I'm going to be a stay at home father until this blows over as my wife has a rock solid job. No need to rush into some ridiculous panic agreement. I really can't see anyone signing a reasonable contract in the next 6 months unless you are an ED or ICU doc
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That sucks brother. This is a terrible scenario for any new grad trying to work in private practice


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Sartorius P.O.D. said:
Yea that's me. Had a private practice job in a great location. low cost of living, he was actually paying me a base salary I was happy with. Contract has been signed sealed delivered for months. Calls me < 2 weeks into the outbreak and tells me there is no way he can meet the salary that we agreed upon because his volume is down to about 25%. Says I can come and work for 33% of collections and take out a loan until they start coming in. I've decided I'm going to be a stay at home father until this blows over as my wife has a rock solid job. No need to rush into some ridiculous panic agreement. I really can't see anyone signing a reasonable contract in the next 6 months unless you are an ED or ICU doc
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Even ED volume is down at a lot of hospitals. Hospitalists and intensivists/critical care are about the only docs whose volume hasn't been affected.

Have you contacted your lawyer about the employer breaking a contract that both parties have signed? Not that it would change your situation, if you held him to it you could bankrupt the practice in which case you still don't have a job (though less competition if you wanted to start your own in the same area!). But I'm curious what legal options new grads, who maybe don't have a spouse who can pay the bills, might have in a similar situation.
 
dtrack22 said:
Even ED volume is down at a lot of hospitals. Hospitalists and intensivists/critical care are about the only docs whose volume hasn't been affected.

Have you contacted your lawyer about the employer breaking a contract that both parties have signed? Not that it would change your situation, if you held him to it you could bankrupt the practice in which case you still don't have a job (though less competition if you wanted to start your own in the same area!). But I'm curious what legal options new grads, who maybe don't have a spouse who can pay the bills, might have in a similar situation.
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I agree this is a beach of contract. Get a lawyer and seriously consider getting some kind of financial compensation. I doubt the contract had any language in it that would protect the employer. Up to you.

This would be catastrophic for you if you were single. This will delay your ability to make payments on your loans. It negatively impacts your life.


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dtrack22 said:
Have you contacted your lawyer about the employer breaking a contract that both parties have signed? Not that it would change your situation, if you held him to it you could bankrupt the practice in which case you still don't have a job (though less competition if you wanted to start your own in the same area!). But I'm curious what legal options new grads, who maybe don't have a spouse who can pay the bills, might have in a similar situation.
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He said that I could pursue legal action but the fact the we haven't entered the term of the contract and that he notified me early actually makes it harder. also since the base salary is on the low end (relative to say what newly minted orthopod or plastic surgeon would be making) and the contract language states that all litigation would need to occur in that state (very far from here) the cost of litigating it would probably outweigh what I could get. Also, since this whole thing is considered an "act of God", he kind of has an out as he cannot control the reason he can't afford to pay me. Even if I won, I would have to sue to recoup legal fees and this whole process could take years. He advised to me try and work something out with him or just get out the contract all together and look into something else.

It really sucks that they can offer you a contract and just be like "Hey COVID-19 is here and now you are on your own" Once again, I'm lucky to be in a situation where I'm not going to be forced into taking a bad deal just get something but I hear you on those who will have no other options. I would just advise those to keep it to as short of a term as possible and try to limit restrictive covenants now more than ever.
 
As much as it sucks for someone signing a contract it also sucks for the person looking to hire.
My numbers slashed 60% or more.
No way we are hiring anyone right now at our MSG.
 
It’s a no win situation for all those involved. Hospital employed DPMs will likely get nailed due to low RVU production. It’s an unprecedented situation and an employer in this case, had no way of anticipating these events. So although it’s true that most of these employers screw new hires, in this case everyone is getting screwed.
 
CutsWithFury said:
I earned my volume by doing community events, being a good surgeon, being nice to patients, putting in extra time on weekends to build my practice. I am hospital employed but I function like a private practice doc because our facility is a community hospital. People don’t typically get referred to a community hospital for specialist care unless they live here and most of the people who live here are Medicaid patients.

Everyone else has been sitting on their butt seeing 5-10 patients a day and making twice as much money as me.

I’ve been preparing for this moment and finally I’ve gotten some vindication for all the extra hours I’ve put in over the years.

You don’t know crap so I would stop posting like you know me and my job situation.


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In Podiatry Hell, foot surgeon. Number one. Steady hand. One day, private practice boss need new foot. I do operation. But, mistake! private practice boss die! Podiatry practice wife/ceo/cfo/secretary/payroll specialist very mad. I hide in fishing boat, come to community hospital. No english, no food, no money. Darryl give me job. Now I have house, American car, and new woman. Darryl save life. My big secret: I kill private practice on purpose. I good surgeon. The best!
 
I deleted a few posts that were inflaming and are against the TOS; warnings will be issued in the future.

I know these are stressful times, but I want to remind everyone that personal attacks are against the TOS.
Please keep this in mind when posting in the future.
 
-If you work for a hospital - you are not your own boss. I know we normally praise all the good things about hospital employment. That said, you could be the chair of the Dr. PusFoot, Limb Salvage and Diabetic Salvation Wound Healing Charcot Frame Academic Memorial Hospital Wing and if your hospital decides to shut down your office - so be it.

-I've been talking to some friends and supplies are getting short as hell. Even if you are still in practice/open - if you can't get cleansing supplies, gloves, whatever - you may be closing soon. I've personally been going store to store looking for just basic antibacterial wipes - even if they are 99.9% instead of 99.999% - so that non-essential surfaces and things around the office can get sprayed down. I got 2 bottles after 9 trips and no wipes of any kind.

-A friend told me that residents for non-emergent cases ie. amps, are being told you can't scrub in - just the attending. The question in that situation is - can you tell the OR manager - ok, our resident will scrub in in place of the tech with the attending. Hope people remember how to self gown and glove.

-I remember quite a few cases in residency where there was a question about infection level or a disagreeable patient fighting over how many toes they would lose or how many operations would be needed. Wouldn't surprise me if there were hospitals who said - BKA is in general "one and done" - amputate and discharge or take this long acting antibiotic and come back when you are ready for your amputation. The days of the 2 week hospitalization for IV antibiotics for a person who won't consent to amputation are probably over (for awhile?).

-Private practice people can stay open if they want to - who can stop them. My town has transitioned from essential businesses to stay at home, but seeking medical care is still allowed. APMA is saying delay all ambulatory elective visits and procedures. My office was hoping to continue offering matrixectomies.

-Should they though? I used to work for a big company pre-podiatry and one of their materials/lectures focused on - would you want what you are doing to show up on the front page of the local newspaper.

-My town's main news source for Covid was posting the locations that Covid positive people had been known to have visited. The 1st person to test positive had been to like 10 well known locations in town. Would you want your little foot clinic showing up as a place where a Covid person had been? Would you like to call all of your encounters since that person had been in your office and say you may have been exposed to Covid here. How defensible will that look if your own national organization is saying cancel most visits.

-I unfortunately personally saw an indirect family member of a Covid person. We called them 2 days afterwards and they denied essentially any contact with the family member, stated they weren't sick, denied being sick at follow-up. They were in our office for ... toenail fungus - we had started cancelling appointments already but weren't quite sure how we would handle new visits since we don't gather information before hand about what the visit is about (drives me crazy). I haven't seen a patient since we found out. The original sick person is associated with a family business and they are getting slaughtered online with people claiming they are lying and that the sick person had been seen all over town (I don't actually think this is the case because the person in question's medical history was shared through a more involved news story and I don't think they could have been that many places). That said - very negative press. Would you like your local health department in your office going through your patient records and calling people?

-We are seeing almost no one in our office. I was asked to take a pay-cut - I didn't honestly think my pay could go any lower, but yeah. My contract doesn't say anything about acts of god or viruses. I'm thankfully well situated ie. emergency fund to last a prolonged downtime. Would I love to make a play and say - I'll switch to no base, but I want my collections % changed. I don't see how I have any leverage - I could throw a fit/threaten to sue but I'm pretty sure that will simply result in termination of my employment. I'm trying every day to increase my understanding of how practices work, but if you told me - would you like to start your own practice now the answer is no - especially because I think I know what's coming after the pandemic. My area is also highly dependent on "oil" money - its going to be rough for those guys. My goal at present - maintain employment, maintain coverage of health insurance for my family. My contract doesn't say anything at all about who pays for tail. It does say my employer will provide malpractice insurance for me. I don't seem to have access to my PICA account - would love to know if the contract with PICA contains more information. Probably should call them. Seems like if I'm let go that should be on our owner.
 
I am fortunate that I am salaried at a hospital, so I am getting normal pay. Before this my numbers were down by 20 percent for 2020, so obviously even lower now. My state has very few cases of covid and our county just got it's first case, but we have been on lockdown for awhile. While I am fortunate to have continued normal income, I do worry about being furloughed.
 
heybrother said:
I'm thankfully well situated ie. emergency fund to last a prolonged downtime. Would I love to make a play and say - I'll switch to no base, but I want my collections % changed. I don't see how I have any leverage - I could throw a fit/threaten to sue but I'm pretty sure that will simply result in termination of my employment. I'm trying every day to increase my understanding of how practices work, but if you told me - would you like to start your own practice now the answer is no - especially because I think I know what's coming after the pandemic. My area is also highly dependent on "oil" money - its going to be rough for those guys.
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I think you could make an argument that this is the perfect time to begin the process of opening your own practice if that's ultimately what you wanted to do. Don't take a pay cut, force your boss you break the contract which likely breaks the restrictive covenant. You're going to need months to get things up and running and to get on insurance panels with your own individual or new organizational NPI. So having no patients and nothing to do for the next two months isn't a big deal. Open up next door if you want. Solicit your old patients and any old referral sources. Securing a loan may or may not be difficult as they often times want to see that you have some source of income other than the practice you are trying to open, which is insane to me but I don't loan out the money. Maybe get a piece of that stimulus pie...

But yeah, you have to trust that the Saudis and the Russians aren't going to screw themselves and the rest of the world if your regional economy is that dependent on baws with King Ranch's and truck nuts.

I would trust the Saudis more than the Russians, but who knows. Demand is going to skyrocket as supply chains in other industries are restored and people go back to work, but if the market has already been flooded and reserves are literally full, then it will be awhile for oil to be back at $65/barrel. It's not as if the shale patch has dried up, it's just a matter of being able to recoup the costs of drilling in order to bring those jobs back as I'm sure there have already been plenty of layoffs. If the rest of the world doesn't dump all of their oil on the market, those jobs will come back quickly.
 
I agree - if you ever thought about opening your own place - now is the perfect time. You need 3 months minimum to get stuff set up, so its not like you have anything else to do for 3 months. And also agree, now is the perfect time to try and get out of your contract.
 
Honestly let these private podiatry practices get "reked" I hope this drives some of these old abusing podiatrist into retirement with their 401k down the drain. thats what they get for ripping off new grads. Our MSG group has taken a hit but i'm still seeing 20 pts and my call keeps me busy. Plus, i've made more money shorting the market this year than the last two years of work.

Covid 19 is evening up the playing fields. all new grads get your CV's ready .
 
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hematosis said:
Honestly let these private podiatry practices get "reked" I hope this drives some of these old abusing podiatrist into retirement with their 401k down the drain. thats what they get for ripping off new grads. Our MSG group has taken a hit but i'm still seeing 20 pts and my call keeps me busy. Plus, i've made more money shorting the market this year than the last two years of work.

Covid 19 is evening up the playing fields. all new grads get your CV's ready .
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Aggressive. Also they don't have 401ks. Their retirement plan is selling their practice. Pro tip - it's worthless. New grads start getting your credit report ready, not your CV. Don't work for another pod
 
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