LTAC moving into my hospital

[Trogghunter]

I am working as a hospitalist and there are talks of a for-profit LTAC moving into our hospital. Apparently they'll have their own doctors during the day, but we will probably be on the hook for codes etc. Anyone have experience in working with such an institution? Does it affect work much? Should we be asking for more pay? Contract renegotiation? We rotate the code pager once a week and we do nights 2-3wks a year, and I otherwise enjoy where I work.

Thanks for any advice.

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[jdh71]

I am working as a hospitalist and there are talks of a for-profit LTAC moving into our hospital. Apparently they'll have their own doctors during the day, but we will probably be on the hook for codes etc. Anyone have experience in working with such an institution? Does it affect work much? Should we be asking for more pay? Contract renegotiation? We rotate the code pager once a week and we do nights 2-3wks a year, and I otherwise enjoy where I work.

Thanks for any advice.

Hells yeah you need to be asking for money from them to cover their codes. Don’t just let them work you for free.

 

[chessknt]

Are you a private practice staffing the hospital? If not then welcome to the corporate world--more work for the same salary.

 

[Trogghunter]

Are you a private practice staffing the hospital? If not then welcome to the corporate world--more work for the same salary.

No, unfortunately in this case we are part of the hospital group and we are not private. I believe that we would be signing new contracts prior to this starting, so I'll see about re-negotiating there.

 

[IM2GI]

Surely the LTAC will be paying the hospital for your coverage as part of their rent. The question is whether or not you have any negotiating power to get a piece of the action. As a hospital employee you may not have much say in the matter.

What happens at night when someone needs a diet order? Trazodone? Are they paging "their" doctors at home or are you doing cross cover tasks?

Certainly worth having your leadership bring it up.

 

[Trogghunter]

Good point that I'll bring up when we meet with the LTAC. I don't know how much negotiating power we have, if any, to be honest. To my knowledge, we did not get a vote on the LTAC coming.

The proposed model for calls at night is that their docs will take floor calls from home, but I am sure that we will bear some of the responsibility. We have a night tele-page system for floor calls but the people in house often have to field them.

We will have to answer to codes/RRT as I mentioned. What I'd like to get is a bonus at night, what I'll get is probably no extra pay and more work. My contract will need to be signed and updated before this is implemented, and I wonder if I can negotiate then.