Pathology Job $39/RVU

[PathDoctor]

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Is $39 per RVU a reasonable rate for a hospital pathologist position?
Should call and medical director duties be given an RVU valuer?

 

[LADoc00]

Is $39 per RVU a reasonable rate for a hospital pathologist position?
Should call and medical director duties be given an RVU valuer?

Never do anything for free where you can be held liable for malpractice. No exceptions literally ever.

If you are in a situation where they are nickel and dime'ing you about 39 bucks for RVU that they define you are always better off with a flat salary IMO.

And in a flat salary scenario, you are always better off in a position where you 1.) get a sizable pension and free healthcare to gap fill before 65 2.) cant be fired because you are part of some union group in the government.

 

[PathDoctor]

Never do anything for free where you can be held liable for malpractice. No exceptions literally ever.

If you are in a situation where they are nickel and dime'ing you about 39 bucks for RVU that they define you are always better off with a flat salary IMO.

And in a flat salary scenario, you are always better off in a position where you 1.) get a sizable pension and free healthcare to gap fill before 65 2.) cant be fired because you are part of some union group in the government.

Is $39 per RVU a reasonable salary?

 

[pathslides]

No. Anything under 48 is crap for hospital employed practice.

 

[Med Director New England]

39 is on the low side.

If you have a typical hospital type of case mix and are being pulled away from sign out by things that don’t generate any RVUs (like tumor boards, cp oversight, etc) and you take ~ 6 weeks off / yr ou’ll have a hard time getting past about 6500 rvus.

You can do the math.

If the practice happens to have a lot of 305s in an area that you like and can sign out quickly you can push it up to 8000.

Call typically no RVU value but medical directorship you should negotiate an RVU value to be assigned based on your time input....or put differently - don’t work for free (as already suggested).

 

[LADoc00]

Just did a quick google search on dollars per RVU and 39 bucks per is stupidly low. Im seeing internal med subspec compensation in range of 50-80.

Are they paying you something other than that? Like some flat rate on top of that amount? Or healthcare+malpractice? Or ?

Otherwise yah bail that turd.

 

[LADoc00]

Tell them sure, but you will never show up on site ever, never answer their phone calls and want the slides delivered to you at home.

Might be somewhat worth it then.

 

[PathDoctor]

Just did a quick google search on dollars per RVU and 39 bucks per is stupidly low. Im seeing internal med subspec compensation in range of 50-80.

Are they paying you something other than that? Like some flat rate on top of that amount? Or healthcare+malpractice? Or ?

Otherwise yah bail that turd.

No other flat rate pay. There is also no RVU credit for medical director of lab, tumor boards, autopsies, etc. They will pay malpractice and health insurance.

 

[LADoc00]

No other flat rate pay. There is also no RVU credit for medical director of lab, tumor boards, autopsies, etc. They will pay malpractice and health insurance.

Oh wow. Definitely pass. Tell them they are about 1/2 of where it needs to go.

 

[doctor313]

This is an interesting conversation.

I'm trying to figure out this whole RVU thing before I apply for jobs... My understanding is that RVUs are compensated by CMS at about $34.89 / RVU. If that's the case, wouldn't $39/RVU actually be more than what is actually being paid by Medicare for our services? Is the sentiment that compensation should be >$50 because private insurance is paying significantly more than that? But I thought private insurance doesn't cough up all the time... can someone help me make sense of this?

 

[deleted314957]

In time, you will find it doesn’t ( or didn’t, you will probably be salaried for your career) make sense. I’ll let the poor folks living it every day go into it further if they don’t vomit first.

 

[AZpath]

This is an interesting conversation.

I'm trying to figure out this whole RVU thing before I apply for jobs... My understanding is that RVUs are compensated by CMS at about $34.89 / RVU. If that's the case, wouldn't $39/RVU actually be more than what is actually being paid by Medicare for our services? Is the sentiment that compensation should be >$50 because private insurance is paying significantly more than that? But I thought private insurance doesn't cough up all the time... can someone help me make sense of this?

A hospital pathologist and lab medical director will have 25-30% uncompensated time under a RVU payment system.
This assumes that you are the main or sole person taking care of the facility's lab medical director activities.
It also assumes the path lab and the clinical lab are well run and you are not baby sitting a sick puppy.
( A crappy clinical lab will take up a lot of time )

RVUs never capture these activities. Most of this kind of work don't have cpts but can take up a lot of time.

This agreement makes little sense unless you have very good understanding of the volume and case mix.
Then you might be able to figure out if the net per year is reasonable.

I doubt it is worth it since your benefits really really suck.
Do they even guarantee 6 weeks unpaid vacation time ?