Kaiser vs Partner Private Practice

[halodoctor]

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Hello everyone,

Briefly, I was fellowship-bound before, but after re-evaluating options and goals, I am now a reformed primary care physician. Recently, I've had the opportunity to meet with several employers (Kaiser and private practice), and I'm wondering if someone could just give me advice for which road I should take.

I'm mostly interested in what people have to say about Kaiser. For example, how much does your salary rise once you are a partner? Do you really only work 9 half-days? What is a reasonable salary to expect at the 5? 10 year marks? Do your patients stay the same? Do you feel like you have ownership of the patients? What types of things should I be thinking of as I finish residency and move on the practice?

Thanks so much to anyone who takes some time to answer these tough questions for me.

 

[gutonc]

I'm mostly interested in what people have to say about Kaiser. For example, how much does your salary rise once you are a partner? Do you really only work 9 half-days? What is a reasonable salary to expect at the 5? 10 year marks? Do your patients stay the same? Do you feel like you have ownership of the patients? What types of things should I be thinking of as I finish residency and move on the practice?

Thanks so much to anyone who takes some time to answer these tough questions for me.

I am not a Kaiser PCP but have plenty of friends who work there, did some time there as an IM resident and did some hospitalist moonlighting in their system.

I can't really comment on salary and changes in it as I don't have any personal experience and most of my friends are within their first year or 2 with them and as such haven't had a chance to hit that point yet. Also, the different Kaiser systems (OR, NoCal, SoCal, GA, HI) have separate individual physician groups that write their own contracts so it will vary based on where you are.

As for the work schedule, yes, that's really the case. Now, whether you use that time to do extra work (which you'll have...no doubt) or to go kite-surfing is up to you.

As for patients, yes, they stay the same (unless they request a new doc or you request one of your partners take them on and it's approved) and you will have not just ownership over them but total responsibility. Kaiser does a very good job of protecting their specialists from bogus consults so half the time when you would be sending off a consult to urology for 2 RBCs in a UA to eval for bladder cancer in a private practice group, at Kaiser there will be a long, evidence-based list of other things you must do before Urology will see them (this is the case for pretty much any specialty).

 

[brc12]

I can't really answer a lot of your questions as I am a hospitalist at kaiser without much knowledge of what the primary care physicians have to deal with. You do need to specify somewhat which kaiser region you are referring to however. Although the insurance plan and foundation are the same, the medical groups are not. (For example - northern california is all 1 medical group; southern california is a completely different group.) The compensation structure and benefits are actually notably different. From what I recall in socal they had a rising scale for seniority which they do not really do in norcal, but the base pay tends to be higher.