Structural Cardiology Lifestyle

[SunshineCoast]

I'm wondering if anyone could share with me a typical week of an interventionalist with structural training looks like - split between coronary work and structural/PAD work? I'm specifically interested in people who work in major cities in the US. Also, how big is the average interventional group in the major cities and what does the call schedule look like? (Ie are most people taking STEMI call and general call?) Thank you!

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[cards67]

Varies tremendously by job. I know structural folks who are part of small group of IC's in major hospital that spend most of their time in cath lab and take awful STEMI call. Structural folks who do gen cards. Folks in large groups, solo, employed, private or academic. Likely structural in major city is going to be saturated and don't be surprised if they're doing gen cards, taking STEMI call and maybe even general call.

 

[timpview]

Often, the big cities have the smallest groups so you have the silliness of a bunch of small groups taking frequent call at multiple hospitals in attempt at market share.

At least in the rural small groups you’re usually not competing with other docs and have a single hospital or two to worry about so it’s just managing frequent call nights.

Sweet spot are those large groups in medium size metro areas or in the markets dominated by a single group.

But yea, structural IC is all over the place with the doc hanging out in the Cath lab jumping from structural to coronary to PAD cases as others feed him cases and do his call as a pretty rare find imo… and something already filled by a mid or late career doc who isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

 

[SunshineCoast]

Often, the big cities have the smallest groups so you have the silliness of a bunch of small groups taking frequent call at multiple hospitals in attempt at market share.

At least in the rural small groups you’re usually not competing with other docs and have a single hospital or two to worry about so it’s just managing frequent call nights.

Sweet spot are those large groups in medium size metro areas or in the markets dominated by a single group.

But yea, structural IC is all over the place with the doc hanging out in the Cath lab jumping from structural to coronary to PAD cases as others feed him cases and do his call as a pretty rare find imo… and something already filled by a mid or late career doc who isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Are most structural guys taking STEMI call even in the large metropolitan cities? And based on your response, I'm assuming it's not common to join a group of 10+ ICs to make the STEMI call burden to less than 1 in 10?

 

[timpview]

I think the % of IC docs in this country who are in groups of 10+ interventional docs or who are doing q10 call is less than than 5%.

I would say the majority (maybe 80%??) of structural guys are still taking STEMI call… and the structural jobs that don’t take call aren’t going to be hiring you.

If you want procedures without call than EP is your friend… or do PAD in an ASC or OBL… Or get lucky in a great structural gig

 

[Limvostov]

I'm in a group of 6 (1EP, 2 general, 2 structural, 1 general IC). We all take general call. Stemi is q3. Structural is about 20% of case volume. Group structure can vary wildly from group to group and region to region.