Job question outpatient/inpatient

[eimaise]

I'm a 3rd year med-peds resident thinking about jobs for when I finish next year.

I'm considering doing all IM hospitalist, but as time goes on, I keep thinking I would like some outpatient (medicine and peds) in the mix as well.

A set up I feel would fit me well would be doing 2 weeks (10 days) of outpatient and 1 week of inpatient (7 days) per month. This way I'd still have the benefit of being at home most evenings for dinner with my family as well as having most weekends off.

Do you think this is a reasonable situation? Would anyone be likely to hire me for a set up like this? I feel I'd either have to do locums or work for two different employers to make something like this work, outside of academics (which I'm not interested in right now).

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[gutonc]

I'm a 3rd year med-peds resident thinking about jobs for when I finish next year.

I'm considering doing all IM hospitalist, but as time goes on, I keep thinking I would like some outpatient (medicine and peds) in the mix as well.

A set up I feel would fit me well would be doing 2 weeks (10 days) of outpatient and 1 week of inpatient (7 days) per month. This way I'd still have the benefit of being at home most evenings for dinner with my family as well as having most weekends off.

Do you think this is a reasonable situation? Would anyone be likely to hire me for a set up like this? I feel I'd either have to do locums or work for two different employers to make something like this work, outside of academics (which I'm not interested in right now).

This sounds like the worst of all possible worlds. And outside of academics (and largely inside it), you're not going to find anybody to pay you to do this unless you have 2 separate jobs. At which point you're going to have to find 2 separate employers that will respect the kind of schedule you want, which frankly just isn't going to happen.

I suppose if you did locums or per diem UC work and 1 week a month as a hospitalist, you could make it work.

I think the academic attending clinic schedule makes all students/residents feel like it's possible to be in clinic 6 days a month and have everything be just fine. But that s*** don't fly in the real world.

 

[eimaise]

This sounds like the worst of all possible worlds. And outside of academics (and largely inside it), you're not going to find anybody to pay you to do this unless you have 2 separate jobs. At which point you're going to have to find 2 separate employers that will respect the kind of schedule you want, which frankly just isn't going to happen.

I suppose if you did locums or per diem UC work and 1 week a month as a hospitalist, you could make it work.

I think the academic attending clinic schedule makes all students/residents feel like it's possible to be in clinic 6 days a month and have everything be just fine. But that s*** don't fly in the real world.

Thanks for your feedback. Why does this sound like the "worst of all possible worlds" ? To me, it would be nicer than being in clinic full-time (sounds horrible). I guess what you're saying is, most clinics in the real world don't want docs to work only part time in their clinics?

The scenario I was thinking was: find a clinic in the city I'd like to move to who would be willing to let me work for them 2 weeks in the month and then work through a locums agency to work one week per month as a hospitalist in a community hospital. I don't see why this would be too strange, but maybe I am way off.

Also, what does UC stand for?

 

[gutonc]

The scenario I was thinking was: find a clinic in the city I'd like to move to who would be willing to let me work for them 2 weeks in the month and then work through a locums agency to work one week per month as a hospitalist in a community hospital. I don't see why this would be too strange, but maybe I am way off.

You are way off. Find a place that's willing to let you work 2 days a week? Easy. Find a place that will let you work 2 weeks on, then 2 weeks off in clinic? Not happening.

Also, what does UC stand for?

Urgent Care.

 

[VA Hopeful Dr]

If you're willing to work in rural upstate South Carolina, I can get you that job tomorrow. A friend of mine from high school is doing almost that exact schedule.

 

[eimaise]

If you're willing to work in rural upstate South Carolina, I can get you that job tomorrow. A friend of mine from high school is doing almost that exact schedule.

That's funny you should mention that because upstate SC is precisely the geographic region I am looking at. I don't graduate residency until June 2019 but if you wanted to PM me the info, I will look into it.

 

[eimaise]

You are way off. Find a place that's willing to let you work 2 days a week? Easy. Find a place that will let you work 2 weeks on, then 2 weeks off in clinic? Not happening.

Urgent Care.

Just wanted to circle back around here to let you know that I have been interviewing for positions in the southeast and multiple institutions are not only willing but eager to let me do the exact set-up I described (1 week hospitalist per month and 3 part-time weeks of clinic per month, for a total of 10 clinic days per month). These are non-academic jobs, and none of them are urgent care. There are opportunities to do this both within institutions and splitting time between institutions, so long as it is pre-specified in the contract. I guess I wasn't way off as they all told me that there has been an uptick for this kind of request in the last couple of years. Not sure where you got your information from, but things may be changing.

 

[bd4727]

What is compensation looking like?


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[IMGASMD]

What is compensation looking like?


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Important question.

 

[pgy0246]

how much time will the hospital/outpatient practice let us decide after the interview?
how many interviews should one go to before narrowing down?

 

[eimaise]

What is compensation looking like?


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Sorry for the late reply. Depends on what I end up going with (mix private practice/employed hospitalist versus working doing everything with the large health care system). I haven't gotten all the details yet, but for working 7 hospitalist days per month plus 10 outpatient days per month, I am looking at 267k with malpractice included and ?benefits. Working on the details as we are early in the negotiation stages now. I am actually about to ask for a higher rate for the outpatient side and asking for ~293k.

 

[eimaise]

how much time will the hospital/outpatient practice let us decide after the interview?
how many interviews should one go to before narrowing down?

I have been given no specific time constraints personally for any of my 4 job opportunities I have interviewed at so far, though one of my residency colleagues interviewed at a large institution in our state and they told her "2 weeks."

For your second question, I am not sure if there's some hard and fast number. If the job is what you want and in the location you want, you may only need to interview in one place. But I think there is benefit in doing several interviews at least to compare things. I plan to do about 6 interviews total personally.

 

[star4angel24]

Sorry for the late reply. Depends on what I end up going with (mix private practice/employed hospitalist versus working doing everything with the large health care system). I haven't gotten all the details yet, but for working 7 hospitalist days per month plus 10 outpatient days per month, I am looking at 267k with malpractice included and ?benefits. Working on the details as we are early in the negotiation stages now. I am actually about to ask for a higher rate for the outpatient side and asking for ~293k.

This is exactly the kind of schedule/position that I would be interested in. Any recs on how you found these positions? Most positions I see are either all outpatient or hospitalist.

 

[bd4727]

Is this ghs system?


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[eimaise]

This is exactly the kind of schedule/position that I would be interested in. Any recs on how you found these positions? Most positions I see are either all outpatient or hospitalist.

I just looked online for who the physician recruiters were for various healthcare systems and then I cold-called them or emailed them explaining my desire. This method led to an interview in each instance (5 times thus far). One place was a private practice that I found that I discovered was hiring and I thought I could be a good fit there, so I just emailed the lead physician and he called me the next day and invited me for an interview. I tried to avoid physician head-hunters and agencies personally.

More specifically, I felt I had to be clear from the get-go about my interests. I told each place I interviewed at before the interview that I wanted to be mix outpatient-inpatient and "could we please discuss this further at my interview?" They all said yes.

 

[eimaise]

Is this ghs system?


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The example I provided above was not with GHS.