VA hospitalist

[DOk1ng]

anyone has experience working as hospitalist at VA?
would you recommend ?
salary is only upto 195K. lot lower than community hospitals

thanks

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[GoodmanBrown]

Are the hours better? What about the pension? I obviously don't know the details as an intern, but I've always understood that your base pay is probably lower, but the perks make it worth it.

 

[jdh71]

Yeah but it's government bennies and 20 years and then "retirement". Also might not be a bad way to spend the first few years out.

 

[P Diddy]

Yeah but it's government bennies and 20 years and then "retirement". Also might not be a bad way to spend the first few years out.

The latter is a very good point. If you're starting out in academia, the VA can be a better option initially because the base salary is higher than what you would get at university. The ceiling is lower at the VA than probably any other job, but it is an easier workload and the job security is unparalleled.

The VA can also compare favorably to private practice for the above reasons. You don't have to worry about overhead, malpractice, or patients calling you to be seen sooner (they just go to the waitlist 😉 ). As jdh mentioned, the VA can be a good place to start, and a safe place from which to explore your options later.

I don't know if anyone has done a net revenue analysis of VA vs private practice jobs, but I'd bet the VA already compares favorably in some instances (such as primary care IM or hospitalist, particularly if you calculate salary/hour).

p diddy

 

[bobow98]

Just a heads up, VA has a new patient satisfaction initiative. Patients now can email you 24 hours a day and you're expected to respond to X % of them within the first Y hours/days/weeks, please research more about the specifics. There's also VA politics and such to deal with, which may or may not be better than academic politics, depending on what sorts of things you want to deal with.

Source: I'm spending 70% of my 4th year at a VA.