Overall, Kaiser is a great gig. The thing to keep in mind though is that each Kaiser medical center is unique. Some are small community hospitals with no teaching, whereas others are large tertiary care centers with residency programs. I am at one of the latter. Each region (i.e. Northern California vs Southern California) will have different pay and benefit structures, though in general, they all tend to be very good. Kaiser is nice for various reasons. The benefits are truly exceptional, including very generous pension plans. They also protect you in the sense that you have caps when you are rounding. The cap for rounders at my center is 12, but often, the census is less, as in 6-8. There is also lots of staffing, so even as an admitter, a typical day is 4-5 admits. It's the kind of place where they really want their hospitalists to stay for the long term, and as a result they don't force you to turn and burn patients. You can actually practice medicine that you can be proud of most of the time. That being said, it's not perfect, no place is. Kaiser is very into to standardization, and while you as the physician do have leeway to do things your own way, if you stray from their standard of practice, you better carefully document why. Since consultants do not get paid extra to see consults in the hospital, calling them for a consult is akin to when you called the fellow on a consulting service as an intern. Not like in private practice, where consultants are breathing down your neck to see your patients. The flip side of that though is that you get lots of autonomy and as a hospitalist you are really the one running the show.
