Pay during military residency

[2021Doctor]

Is this correct?
Basic Pay (often referred to as base pay) is based on your rank and active duty time. A newly minted O-3 intern coming onto active duty from the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP) will get constructive credit for the 4 years of medical school and be paid as an O-3 with 4 years of time in service. Some people will tell you that you get paid as an O-3 with less than 2 years. Those people are wrong. There is a DOD Instruction on this exact topic. You get 4 years of “credit” for pay purposes (though not for retirement) for the 4 years that you spent in medical school, even though you weren’t on active duty in school.
How military doctors get paid, and to how to make sure you’re getting paid what you deserve

Here is a posting in the comments from that page:
The relevant reference is DOD Instruction (DODI) 6000-13, section 6.1.2, which reads as follows: “Constructive Service Credit. This credit provides a person who begins commissioned service after obtaining the additional education, training, or experience required for appointment, designation, or assignment as an officer in a health profession, with a grade and date of rank comparable to that attained by officers
who begin commissioned service after getting a baccalaureate degree and serve for the period of time it would take to obtain the additional education. Constructive service credit shall be determined according to the following guidelines:”
Relevant subsections are:
6.1.2.2.1, which reads as follows: “Four years of constructive service credit shall be granted for completion of first professional degrees that include medical (M.D.), osteopathy (D.O.), dental (D.D.S. or D.M.D.), optometry (O.D.), podiatry (Pod.D. or D.P.), veterinary (D.V.M.), and pharmacy (Ph.D.).”
6.1.2.2.4, which says “Year-for-year credit shall be granted for the successful completion of internship, residency, fellowship or equivalent graduate medical, dental, or other formal professional training (i.e., clinical psychology internship or dietetic internship, etc.) required by the Military Service concerned.”

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[SirGecko]

No it’s O3 with zero years unless you have prior service. USUHS people are actually active duty the four years of medical school and also start residency as O3 with zero years.

I think the instruction is being read wrong by the people trying to navy lawyer you into thinking you get extra pay. I think it’s saying that if you obtain the degree on your own they will give you credit for it if you join after. So like if you joined after neurosurgeon residency they would commission you as a LCDR with 11 years of service. Hadn’t heard of anyone ever getting credit for medical school for pay purposes but maybe those (rare) cases where people joined after paying their own way through school are the exception.

The short answer is that no you don’t get o3 over four as an intern.

Edit: btw where are you getting this information from? Like where is the thread you got these arguments from?

 

[pawprint]

This is totally incorrect. In fact, I had a co-intern that was actually getting paid as if he was in for 4 years during internship, and big Navy found the error and came back and took the money out of his paychecks until he paid off the extra money he was incorrectly given.

So before you go making a push to get paid more based on your technical interpretation, even if you convince someone that you’re correct, all it takes is someone higher up to realize what you did was wrong and you’ll owe the money back. Highly advise against this. Interns do not get credit for payment based on their IRR entry date, and they shouldn’t. We didn’t do anything in Medical school related to the military to earn that. You didn’t wear a uniform, and you didn’t earn time in service.

Usuhs is different, they wear their uniform, maintain military standards all 4 years of their med school (and incur a longer obligation). They earned their military pay.

 

[Volatile]

Not that it matters to me anymore, but I believe time in medical school or residency did count for something. I know multiple people, including myself, that were civilian for medicl school and residency and came on active duty with 4yrs of service on their paystubs (these were all HPSP). So the military did recognize some kind of “prior” service, even though it was all civilian training.

 

[pawprint]

If you do FTOS (full time out service), you will get paid for time in residency. Obviously, all in-service residency (including internship) time counts. That’s why Landing an FTOS selection is a golden nugget

Nobody should get paid for time in med school under Hpsp though. You get your school paid for, and you’re given a monthly stipend to pay for food/rent. The only reason you are brought into the IRR is to keep you on a leash to make sure they get their active duty doctor once you graduate. It’s basically ROTC. College students don’t get to count their ROTC time towards their pay.

 

[DMBandFan86]

For other people who may be researching a military career, if you go army reserve, you would get credit during school as long as you did your monthly drills properly. If your residency is long enough you could have 8-10 years available for retirement before you really even put the uniform on besides for bolc.

 

[backrow]

Is this correct?
Basic Pay (often referred to as base pay) is based on your rank and active duty time. A newly minted O-3 intern coming onto active duty from the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP) will get constructive credit for the 4 years of medical school and be paid as an O-3 with 4 years of time in service. Some people will tell you that you get paid as an O-3 with less than 2 years. Those people are wrong. There is a DOD Instruction on this exact topic. You get 4 years of “credit” for pay purposes (though not for retirement) for the 4 years that you spent in medical school, even though you weren’t on active duty in school.
How military doctors get paid, and to how to make sure you’re getting paid what you deserve

Here is a posting in the comments from that page:
The relevant reference is DOD Instruction (DODI) 6000-13, section 6.1.2, which reads as follows: “Constructive Service Credit. This credit provides a person who begins commissioned service after obtaining the additional education, training, or experience required for appointment, designation, or assignment as an officer in a health profession, with a grade and date of rank comparable to that attained by officers
who begin commissioned service after getting a baccalaureate degree and serve for the period of time it would take to obtain the additional education. Constructive service credit shall be determined according to the following guidelines:”
Relevant subsections are:
6.1.2.2.1, which reads as follows: “Four years of constructive service credit shall be granted for completion of first professional degrees that include medical (M.D.), osteopathy (D.O.), dental (D.D.S. or D.M.D.), optometry (O.D.), podiatry (Pod.D. or D.P.), veterinary (D.V.M.), and pharmacy (Ph.D.).”
6.1.2.2.4, which says “Year-for-year credit shall be granted for the successful completion of internship, residency, fellowship or equivalent graduate medical, dental, or other formal professional training (i.e., clinical psychology internship or dietetic internship, etc.) required by the Military Service concerned.”

A tale as old as time….

No, not correct for pay in regards to intern pay and O3>4. They aren’t fully reading the instruction they are quoting.

HPSP time is non-creditable for pay purposes. Same with USUHS time. So a new intern gets the longevity pay for the years they had when they started either of those programs (0 for most.). HSCP and some of the Army Reserve programs are different.

Someone above mentioned retirement and this is where things can get quite convoluted. USUHS time is creditable to the retirement multiplier when someone hits 20 years of service. It does not count towards the 20 years of service though. So essentially your retirement multiplier jumps from 20 to 24 years once someone hits 20 years of Service.

HPSP time CAN count towards 20 years of service for a reserve retirement in some instances. The verbiage changes and I can’t quote the exact instruction off the top of my head, but the main factor is one must be in one of the critical wartime specialties (which that list changes). This one can take you from 16 to 20 years (at least could in the past, it’s possible they’ve removed this loophole), but it didn’t apply to an active duty person, so you’d have to switch to the reserves then retire and reserve retirement is a whole different beast.

 

[ProwlerturnGas]

They removed the loop hole for Navy Reserve retirement. You now have to have 20 years to get HPSP credit

 

[backrow]

They removed the loop hole for Navy Reserve retirement. You now have to have 20 years to get HPSP credit

Boo!!!

 

[orbitsurgMD]

Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, in 1982, there was a piece of federal legislation passed called DOPMA. That law changed how time-in-grade and time toward minimum service to retirement for HPSP (and USUHS) was calculated. If you were commissioned before the law was passed, the four years in medical school did count toward your initial 20 to retirement and did count as years-in-service to calculate base pay. So you started internship as an O-3 with 4 years not zero years. That was not an insubstantial difference in pay and that TIS differential rode with you for your career. (I wasn't so lucky) After 1982, the system as it exists now required you put in 20 years service after starting active duty before any of the time in medical school was counted toward your retirement calculation.

 

[armytrainingsir]

They removed the loop hole for Navy Reserve retirement. You now have to have 20 years to get HPSP credit

Not a ‘loophole’ at all.

Just reversing a 20 year old policy that was implemented in 01 or so to retain docs in the active reserves for the GWOT.