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What is the going rate of for a psych office manager in the northeast. 1099 vs W2?
Office manager
- Thread starter liquidshadow22
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Wow I can't find anyone with decent experience managing a practice before looking for less than $35 an hour
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Yeah, I can't imagine you'll find many people willing to take that ****ty of a deal in todays low unemployment climate. Just checked, Indeed, the going rate here is 25-35 with benefits.
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An office manager would not typically qualify as an independent contractor. The pay should depend more on what they are worth to you than any other metric. Quality people tend to get underpaid and undervalued in healthcare because of the skinny margins that end up happening with procedure-based insurance compensation.
I hired a stay-at-home mom who works remotely for me 15-20 hrs/week. I didn’t know the going rate was so high. Yikes. I went off of ads I saw on Indeed. Maybe I’ll have to rethink it.
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Did they have any prior experience managing a practice?
Anyone who has been a manager at a few practices in the past, they are used hospital jobs that pay like 80k to 90k salaries it seems
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Yeah, I agree with the above. I pay my nanny / house manager $25/hour. I don't have a practice manager, but I expect to pay them more when I eventually need one.
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There is a difference between an office manager versus an assistant. Keep this in mind.
What duties will you actually write up in the job description and expect?
An office manager might have ability to interact with contracts with insurance, or deposit money, or cut checks for refunds to patients/insurance [handling money], etc.
Really just depends on the job duties.
I currently wear the badge of owner / office manager/ plants ops / cleaning staff / IT help / marketing / "provider".
My assistant does scheduling / collections / some times quick first line crisis call back of 'what's going on patient?' / cleaning staff when we used to be in the same office / used to greet patients when they'd enter when we were in same office. / patient list management of details for factoids for 'back office staff.'
What duties will you actually write up in the job description and expect?
An office manager might have ability to interact with contracts with insurance, or deposit money, or cut checks for refunds to patients/insurance [handling money], etc.
Really just depends on the job duties.
I currently wear the badge of owner / office manager/ plants ops / cleaning staff / IT help / marketing / "provider".
My assistant does scheduling / collections / some times quick first line crisis call back of 'what's going on patient?' / cleaning staff when we used to be in the same office / used to greet patients when they'd enter when we were in same office. / patient list management of details for factoids for 'back office staff.'
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I was about to say the same thing, make sure you actually need an "office manager". There's a big pay difference between an admin assistant/secretary and true "office manager" because there's a big responsibility difference. Managers with prior experience in medical offices are going to expect higher salaries because they've been doing things like managing multi-"provider" practices with multiple administrative employees working under them previously. Not many solo or micropractices are going to really see proportional value from an office manager.
If you just need a secretary to check people in, field phone calls, schedule followups, that's going to be more of the entry level salary and might be less of a shell shock with cost.
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“Manager” duties in a practice can vary widely. In a 1 clinician practice, you may not need a true “manager”. I’ve seen ranges of $15-$75/hr
If I'm doing 16 clinical hours a week, how many hours do you think I'd realistically need from front office staff?
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You can make it work without front desk staff, and people commonly do. Train your patients to do most communication via a patient portal. Let them know you respond within one business day. Call back new inquiries (left on voicemail) promptly. Especially if you do a fair amount of therapy (leading to lower volume) you can likely manage things.
If you do hire front office staff I think it makes sense to have them present during your office hours (for example, Monday and Tuesday 8-5, Wednesday 8 to noon if that's when you see patients). You can then either answer calls in the off-hours yourself, or consider a virtual assistant-type setup to lower costs.
But if you are just getting started I think it makes sense to hold off on hiring someone until you find you need it. As you build your panel you will have more downtime and your finances will be better off without the major expense of hiring staff.
