please help with private practice job hunt...!

[Pandavirus]

I am looking for job prospects in private practice. Please chime in if I am wrong...

Have just started my search but it seems like starting salaries are anywhere between 250K and 300K for partnership track which is possible in >2 or more years. Incentive pay for working harder than your base worth is usually part of the deal. Seems like a common denominator is that when one becomes a partner, they then may or may not have an opportunity to buy shares in the group.

Is that starting salary average or should I keep looking? Is this the way the majority of private practices run? How do these shares really work? How hard do you have to work to get incentive pay?

I feel so lost. Residency and fellowship don't really prepare you for the real world.

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[willabeast]

this probably sounds stupid, but i would not pick a practice based on $$. i would like to know what sort of patients you will be seeing (preferably middle class and who speak English), what the litigation climate is (avoid Florida and Alaska),
what are the hours, and most of all, what sorts of colleagues you will be working with. nearness to important in laws also a big plus if married, and very important if starting a family. also, what is the call schedule? what sort of c-arm do they have?
does the xray tech know anything? money would be the last thing on my agenda. to each his own, however.

 

[Mister Mxyzptlk]

That sounds about par for the course. I have also heard of getting 35% of collections. I don't know about that number and I would not agree to it unless I had free access to my accounts to see how hard they are working the A/R.

I don't understand how you can be a partner without owning shares though, or whether you should have to buy shares. That's what the 2-year peonship is for.

 

[emd123]

this probably sounds stupid, but i would not pick a practice based on $$. i would like to know what sort of patients you will be seeing (preferably middle class and who speak English), what the litigation climate is (avoid Florida and Alaska),
what are the hours, and most of all, what sorts of colleagues you will be working with. nearness to important in laws also a big plus if married, and very important if starting a family. also, what is the call schedule? what sort of c-arm do they have?
does the xray tech know anything? money would be the last thing on my agenda. to each his own, however.

I agree.

Also, focus on the character of the people you'll be joining, as well as their practice philosophy.

Are they strict with opiates or prescribe them loosely?

Do they use interventions appropriately or inject anything and everything just for money?

Do they treat others with respect, or are they likely to chew you up and spit you out after your initial contract is over?

What is the culture of the practice, Medicaid patients with opiate doses off the charts, or appropriate patients that want to get better on generally low opiate doses with lots of patients not even getting opiates?

Would you be a patient at this practice, and would you send your family to this practice if you weren't working there?

No amount of money, in my opinion, is worth compromising on joining a practice you feel practices in the way you want to practice.

Do the right thing. Join a group that "does the right thing" and the money will work itself out in the long run. Don't join the practice with the longest lines. Join the practice the upstanding people of the community go to when they need a pain doctor, not necessarily the practice making the most money or with the highest volume of patients.



These are some questions you need to ask yourself.

 

[Mister Mxyzptlk]

Also try to speak with whoever was there and left. And do a background check. You do it when you hire a $10/hr employee but not when you enter into a business partnership. It would have saved me a world of difficulty years ago if only I'd done that and seen the prior lawsuits for breach and the IRS liens.

 

[jabreal00]

I am not pain but GI. My wife is Pain-Anesthesia. She just joined a private practice group after serving/practicing in the military. We are in the mid-Atlantic. $250-260K/yr was the standard offer she got from various groups. Only the mills were offering close to $300K or more starting but the work is laborious, unfulfilling and there's the expectation to be a needle jockey and/or pill pusher. She settled for slightly less but works only 4 days a week, with negligible call, partnership track after 2 years, keeps 40% of what she brings in over her base, can go up to 5 days a week with pay bump anytime she wants. She's happy with her schedule and colleagues and staff she works with.