Kaiser Residency Pension?

[Dr. Dorito]

Hey everyone. Not sure if this is the right thread for this but hopefully it's appropriate.

I was looking over the SoCal Kaiser Residency Salary & Benefits page (link below) and I noticed that there was a pension included that seems to kick in after 1 year of employment with 1000 hours. Theres also a link to a pamphlet which mentions that "retirement income based on your compensation and years of service when you retire" and that you are fully vested in the plan after 5 years.

Salary & Benefits - Residency Programs | Kaiser So Cal Residency and Fellowship Programs

Does anyone know if this pension has anything to do with the actual Kaiser pension? Like if say you spent 6 years as a resident/fellow (assuming fellows are included) training with Kaiser SoCal (1 year for the pension to kick in and 5 years to be fully vested) and worked an additional 5 years as an attending you could stand to have a pension as described by the common plan linked below? Or is this a completely disjointed thing from the pension described for attending physicians (which also strikes me as odd seeing as who includes a pension for a position that is by design temporary?).

https://scpmgphysiciancareers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/scpmg-benefits-book.pdf

I understand this is probably something most residents would never be able to take advantage of (1 year to kick in and 5 years to get fully vested lol) but I'm just imagining a scenario where after 6 years of training and 5 years of being an attending, a pension is already guaranteed (assuming the well doesnt run dry).

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[mvenus929]

I do not know for sure, but often hospitals try to keep the people they train--it means less money training at the faculty level and less cost trying to recruit (if someone signs early in the academic year before starting, they don't even need to advertise the position).

At the hospital I did my fellowship at and stayed on as faculty, the HR benefits carried over (that is, my years of service in the organization start from when I started fellowship, the match on my 403b and our pension-like program continued from fellowship into faculty, etc). However, some other benefits specific to faculty do not count my total time at the hospital, just my time in the faculty role (this is mostly pertinent to vacation days).

Kaiser developed residency programs so that they'd have a stream from trainees to faculty to reduce the need to recruit. It would not surprise me if benefits carried over as a way to sweeten the deal (as in, a family medicine resident staying on as faculty and being vested after only 3 years instead of the 5 (+1) years of a new recruit).

 

[Dr. Dorito]

I do not know for sure, but often hospitals try to keep the people they train--it means less money training at the faculty level and less cost trying to recruit (if someone signs early in the academic year before starting, they don't even need to advertise the position).

I see. Thanks for the insight. Makes sense espc if the resident in question is a known quality (personable, easy to work with, etc etc).

It would not surprise me if benefits carried over as a way to sweeten the deal (as in, a family medicine resident staying on as faculty and being vested after only 3 years instead of the 5 (+1) years of a new recruit).

I see that does sound reasonable. I would suppose that also means that the family medicine resident in that example might be fully vested in the resident's pension at a way of sweeting the deal, but the medical group's pension (common plan) would be starting from ground zero. It does seem after all that the medical group pension seems to have a different timeline than the residency pension (5 to fully vested for the residents' plan vs 10 years for physicians' common plan).

That being said, if the years of service accumulated by a Kaiser trainee from residency and fellowship followed them as an attending in the medical group, then I could see a pathway where after 5 years as a trainee and 5 years as an attending they'd already be fully vested in the medical group's pension plan (which at least for SCPMG, looks quite valuable). For a doc graduating medical school at say 26-28 that could mean a full pension guaranteed (assuming Kaiser pension stays funded for the next half century lol) by age 36-38. At that point either stay if you like it or strike it out on your own. At any rate, I just thought a route like this might be an interesting way to financially leverage the long training period of medicine.