Private contractor pay!

[Tiger26]

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Read on Yahoo that the Army is hiring 200 more psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to deal w/PTSD stuff. The contract is for $33 million, which comes out to $165,000 per worker. Given the fact that social workers, and to a lesser extent psychologists, are probably going to make less, I can only imagine how much each psychiatrist w/an MD is banking off this.

In light of this kind of stuff, what's the dynamic people have seen regarding private contractors getting way more for the same job than those with the uniform on? I don't think I'd be too happy . . . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070615/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/military_mental_health

 

[West Side]

Read on Yahoo that the Army is hiring 200 more psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to deal w/PTSD stuff. The contract is for $33 million, which comes out to $165,000 per worker. Given the fact that social workers, and to a lesser extent psychologists, are probably going to make less, I can only imagine how much each psychiatrist w/an MD is banking off this.

In light of this kind of stuff, what's the dynamic people have seen regarding private contractors getting way more for the same job than those with the uniform on? I don't think I'd be too happy . . . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070615/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/military_mental_health

Within one standard deviation.

http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresult_national_HC07000027.html

 

[megadon]

Hold your horses! You haven't taken account of the MASSIVE beaucracy involved with a government contract. You need to pay all the people involved with processing the funds, tracking the funds, etc, and they aren't the same people. I had a million dollars three years ago to spend as a Lieutenant. If I wanted to hire another contractor (and I did), if I wanted to pay him 80k, I had to spend 160k. The military is very actively trying to outsource a lot of physicians. Guess what, the pay sucks, and you get what you pay for. Meanwhile, it gives them an excuse to cut the aspiring military physician's (me) speciality.

 

[The White Coat Investor]

Hold your horses! You haven't taken account of the MASSIVE beaucracy involved with a government contract. You need to pay all the people involved with processing the funds, tracking the funds, etc, and they aren't the same people. I had a million dollars three years ago to spend as a Lieutenant. If I wanted to hire another contractor (and I did), if I wanted to pay him 80k, I had to spend 160k. The military is very actively trying to outsource a lot of physicians. Guess what, the pay sucks, and you get what you pay for. Meanwhile, it gives them an excuse to cut the aspiring military physician's (me) speciality.

The contractors I work with are paid very well (and so they managed to get pretty good docs.) They make substantially more than me, are never deployed, and can walk just about anytime they want. Of course, their contract isn't very secure and they can be fired on a whim too.

 

[Croooz]

The pay depends on the contracted companies benefits package. The better the benefits the less pay in your pocket. Even if you get crappy benefits the pay may still be substandard because due to "administrative costs" they "tax" the hell out of the money so the employee doesn't make as much as they should.

All in all, how it usually works is you get crappy benefits but outstanding salaries and a short life span with the company. As a military contractor you may work in a position for many many years with many many different companies. With each company things change. What I've found is that the pay goes up but the benefits go down.

 

[megadon]

Ok, I agree with the last two posts. What I was trying to point out is that when you see a $4 million dollar contract for x number of employees, you can't divide 4 million by x number of employees to figure out how much they will probably offer you.

Completely agree that contractor pay is good (if you are decently educated), but very unstable. Once a year you are wading through getting your new work order approved, meanwhile congress can't pass a budget, so whoever is approving your work order doesn't have approved funds to allocate, etc, etc. So you end up billing someone else's work package for a month and they bill you for a month later. It really sucks and is NOT the way to do business. Meanwhile you go to meetings where they pass around a sheet for everyone to put their email addresses on. Granted, there is only one new guy in the room, but five guys no longer work for Perot, now they're working for Stanley, or Lockheed. Granted that's on the defense side, I wouldn't expect it to be different on the medical side.

 

[alpha62]

I worked for WWW.CMSE.NET and they took care of me. good bennies too, but that was 2000.

 

[West Side]

It's a good rule of thumb that a given employer will pay out a little more than 55% of cash compensation in benefits. Obviously, logarithmic in nature (someone making 7 figures isn't going to need $600K in core benefits like health, life, etc), but for shlubs making between $20k - $240K, that's a pretty decent average.

Maybe the federal government exercises better buying power, but given the amount of graft and lousy decision making I see in other civil buying departments, I suspect they're getting less for more.

 

[Floater268]

I may sound like a scab for asking this, but my father was interested in a civilian contractor position as a physician. Where, pray-tell, would one be able to locate the listings for available contractor billets.

Appreciate it

 

[MeMoMa]

usajobs.gov

 

[Out in 2008]

My impression overall is that the contractor pay isn't that great. My billet (GMO) at this clinic disappeared under the PBD 712 program about 2 years ago and they still haven't been able to hire a physician to replace me. OTOH, they may not be very aggressive about this because they have cheap labor (me) for another year.

We had one contract NP leave because she wasn't getting paid enough. In our clinic the government money goes to some contract service and that service pays the provider, usually significantly less.

 

[Floater268]

I imagine its simply a trade off of headaches. Instead of dealing with HMO/managed care issues, you have to settle for a lower paying position as well as having to deal with military rank structure interfering with patient care. Its a tough call.

 

[FliteSurgn]

The base I was stationed at had a very low surgical volume, but they somehow decided that they needed a third general surgeon (before I was asigned there). So, they hired a civilian contract surgeon for $30k per month. In his 4 months there, he did 3 lipoma removals and one hernia repair. Great utilization of assets!

 

[alpha62]

I imagine its simply a trade off of headaches. Instead of dealing with HMO/managed care issues, you have to settle for a lower paying position as well as having to deal with military rank structure interfering with patient care. Its a tough call.

Contract NURSES are a pain to deal with. More trouble than they are worth, and they don't seem to be accountable to anyone.

 

[alpha62]

The base I was stationed at had a very low surgical volume, but they somehow decided that they needed a third general surgeon (before I was asigned there). So, they hired a civilian contract surgeon for $30k per month. In his 4 months there, he did 3 lipoma removals and one hernia repair. Great utilization of assets!

I worked in Indian Health. Up to our necks in gall bladders and the USPHS surgeon did about 2 cases a week. Every time we called, she told us to have the patient eat baby food for a week and call her back.

Deploying USPHS to Iraq seems like a good way to cull the herd of this dead weight. They'll drop a retirement packet before they get their boots issued.