Is my job as bad as I think it is?

[mumixam]

Just want to know if I'm off base. Hoping yall can shed some light on if this is actually bad or if I'm just burned out.

Pay ends up being around $300k per year, 7-7, decent cost of living area.
census is 16-20 patients per day, usually 1-4+ are ICU, non-geo
We also do rolling admission and do 1-2 admissions per day
There have been times where I have 18 patients including 6 ICU patients and I do two admissions.

Am I crazy for thinking that I'm under paid for this workload?

Also, do rolling admissions suck as much as I think they do? I'm in the middle of rounding and I'll get an admission at 9 AM. Thanks to metrics I have to stop what I'm doing and go do the admission right then. Then I have to stay late if it's close to my turn to admit, sometimes I'm waiting there until 6 or 7.

Thoughts?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[aafisahar]

real icu or fake icu? like are you managing pressors, vent, etc, or is it a dude on a dilt drip?

 

[mumixam]

real icu or fake icu? like are you managing pressors, vent, etc, or is it a dude on a dilt drip?

Both, but mostly not very sick

 

[chessknt]

Both, but mostly not very sick

So you are managing vents and intubating people? You billing CC time on these 6 people each day?

If so then yes you are being underpaid.

 

[mumixam]

No and No

 

[dgdg]

Just want to know if I'm off base. Hoping yall can shed some light on if this is actually bad or if I'm just burned out.

Pay ends up being around $300k per year, 7-7, decent cost of living area.
census is 16-20 patients per day, usually 1-4+ are ICU, non-geo
We also do rolling admission and do 1-2 admissions per day
There have been times where I have 18 patients including 6 ICU patients and I do two admissions.

Am I crazy for thinking that I'm under paid for this workload?

Also, do rolling admissions suck as much as I think they do? I'm in the middle of rounding and I'll get an admission at 9 AM. Thanks to metrics I have to stop what I'm doing and go do the admission right then. Then I have to stay late if it's close to my turn to admit, sometimes I'm waiting there until 6 or 7.

Thoughts?

Sounds good to me. Better than I had when I did hospitalist work out of residency.

 

[collegestud2013]

Just want to know if I'm off base. Hoping yall can shed some light on if this is actually bad or if I'm just burned out.

Pay ends up being around $300k per year, 7-7, decent cost of living area.
census is 16-20 patients per day, usually 1-4+ are ICU, non-geo
We also do rolling admission and do 1-2 admissions per day
There have been times where I have 18 patients including 6 ICU patients and I do two admissions.

Am I crazy for thinking that I'm under paid for this workload?

Also, do rolling admissions suck as much as I think they do? I'm in the middle of rounding and I'll get an admission at 9 AM. Thanks to metrics I have to stop what I'm doing and go do the admission right then. Then I have to stay late if it's close to my turn to admit, sometimes I'm waiting there until 6 or 7.

Thoughts?

Pay seems low for census and workload you're describing, especially if you're not a new grad. Even though you're doing day shifts, pay should be closer $340-360k considering you're doing both rounding and admitting everyday (I'm guessing your hospital doesn't have a dedicated admitting shift, which is what many places do so you can leave early on the majority of days) and managing ICU level patients which should allow for critical care time billing. Hopefully there's an intensivist managing the ICU patients as well. And this is assuming you're at a hospital with good ancillary staffing and subspecialty support (otherwise if would be even harder and not safely doable).

Though it's possible if you're in a saturated city, pay can still be low and considered competitive locally.

Also what's the pay structure? is it just $300k flat or are there RVU and quality bonus on top of the base? If there's no RVU portion of pay then it's even easier to get taken advantage of when the census goes up.

 

[mumixam]

Pay seems low for census and workload you're describing, especially if you're not a new grad. Even though you're doing day shifts, pay should be closer $340-360k considering you're doing both rounding and admitting everyday (I'm guessing your hospital doesn't have a dedicated admitting shift, which is what many places do so you can leave early on the majority of days) and managing ICU level patients which should allow for critical care time billing. Hopefully there's an intensivist managing the ICU patients as well. And this is assuming you're at a hospital with good ancillary staffing and subspecialty support (otherwise if would be even harder and not safely doable).

Though it's possible if you're in a saturated city, pay can still be low and considered competitive locally.

Also what's the pay structure? is it just $300k flat or are there RVU and quality bonus on top of the base? If there's no RVU portion of pay then it's even easier to get taken advantage of when the census goes up.

Flat rate

 

[Splenda88]

If you are in a desirable decent size city and you can sometimes leave early, I think you have an average gig.

My gig pay structure is similar to yours (50k more) except that I am in a small city (population of ~60k).

Average census ~16-17 plus 1.5 admits. Semi open ICU (no vent) but once pressor requirement is getting higher (eg, >10 mcg of levo), we can ask the intensivist to be on board.

I can leave early 3 out of the 7 days. I usually leave between 1-2:30pm those days.

We have a dedicated admitting person, which is not enough IMO. We were told they are trying to add an NP/PA, but I rarely believe what people in administration say until it happens.

We were also told they are trying to hire another hospitalist for each week so average census can be ~15-16 but few people are against it so they can pick up extra shifts since extra shifts get paid at a rate almost $2400/day

 

[scoopdaboop]

If you are in a desirable decent size city and you can sometimes leave early, I think you have an average gig.

My gig pay structure is similar to yours (50k more) except that I am in a small city (population of ~60k).

Average census ~16-17 plus 1.5 admits. Semi open ICU (no vent) but once pressor requirement is getting higher (eg, >10 mcg of levo), we can ask the intensivist to be on board.

I can leave early 3 out of the 7 days. I usually leave between 1-2:30pm those days.

We have a dedicated admitting person, which is not enough IMO. We were told they are trying to add an NP/PA, but I rarely believe what people in administration say until it happens.

We were also told they are trying to hire another hospitalist for each week so average census can be ~15-16 but few people are against it so they can pick up extra shifts since extra shifts get paid at a rate almost $2400/day

What's a common "daily rate"? 2400 a day for extra shifts seems great. Is 2k per day base rate common? i'ma current resident and deciding what i can accomplish as an attending. so if you do 7 on 7 off for a calendar year, that's 7 * 26 so 182 shifts based on 2 week increments. IF on let' say 20/26 of those 2 week increments you work 8 days on, 6 off, that's an extra 20 shifts at 2400 which substanitally increases pay, without sacrifing too much lifestyle it seems. Of course, if you can only pick up shifts say on the middle of your week off, and not right after your 7 day working ends, seems not as good.

 

[Splenda88]

What's a common "daily rate"? 2400 a day for extra shifts seems great. Is 2k per day base rate common? i'ma current resident and deciding what i can accomplish as an attending. so if you do 7 on 7 off for a calendar year, that's 7 * 26 so 182 shifts based on 2 week increments. IF on let' say 20/26 of those 2 week increments you work 8 days on, 6 off, that's an extra 20 shifts at 2400 which substanitally increases pay, without sacrifing too much lifestyle it seems. Of course, if you can only pick up shifts say on the middle of your week off, and not right after your 7 day working ends, seems not as good.

$1920/day.

I don't think 2k per day is common.

 

[collegestud2013]

What's a common "daily rate"? 2400 a day for extra shifts seems great. Is 2k per day base rate common? i'ma current resident and deciding what i can accomplish as an attending. so if you do 7 on 7 off for a calendar year, that's 7 * 26 so 182 shifts based on 2 week increments. IF on let' say 20/26 of those 2 week increments you work 8 days on, 6 off, that's an extra 20 shifts at 2400 which substanitally increases pay, without sacrifing too much lifestyle it seems. Of course, if you can only pick up shifts say on the middle of your week off, and not right after your 7 day working ends, seems not as good.

Completely depends on facility and location. Also depends on factors like census, how long the shift is, day vs nights. Lower end for a typical 12 hr shift may be $1300-1400 per day if you're in a saturated city and/or the census is on the low side. Could be double that in a rural area that's difficult to recruit and you're getting paid a locums rate.

Also availability of shifts on your week off will completely depend on the facility as well. Some are fully staffed and there's none available in house (and you may have to go to outside location on PRN or locums basis, which would require lots of additional credentialing; and many health system jobs may not allow outside work in their contract unless approved), while others that have staffing issues or just purposely not fully staff and have plenty of open shifts.