Voluntary Separation

Started by Chonal Atresia
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Chonal Atresia

Full Member
15+ Year Member
Thought this might get everyone's attention!

So I actually posed this question in an email to my detailer who manages my specialty as well as about 8-10 others. As of right now, there is no program for MC officers for early voluntary separation from the military. This may (but probably won't) change after the election once sequestration is dealt with and more definitive decisions are made regarding the details of the drawdown (i.e. gross #s, MOSs, speed of exits, etc).
 
CURE FOR CANCER!!!

Thought this might get everyone's attention! So I actually posed this question in an email to my attending who manages my oncology patient as well as about 8-10 others. As of right now, there is no cure for cancer. This may (but probably won't) change as new avenues of research are explored and more definitive data is collected regarding the details of the new technology (i.e targeted viruses, nanotechnology, Reiki healing, etc).
 
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The army needs to cut at least 80,000 troops over 5 years. This is guarenteed to happen. That number will double to 160,000 if sequestration happens (which obviously isn't guarenteed but very well could happen). Many will be "forced" out with voluntarily or nonvoluntarily discharges in order to meet this quota. I only inquired whether this currently was an option for MC officers. It may be wishful thiniking but it has happened in the past where MC officers were allowed out of their contracts before the end of their ADSOs (see mid 1990s and Clinton years).
 
Chonal Atresia said:
The army needs to cut at least 80,000 troops over 5 years. This is guarenteed to happen. That number will double to 160,000 if sequestration happens (which obviously isn't guarenteed but very well could happen). Many will be "forced" out with voluntarily or nonvoluntarily discharges in order to meet this quota. I only inquired whether this currently was an option for MC officers. It may be wishful thiniking but it has happened in the past where MC officers were allowed out of their contracts before the end of their ADSOs (see mid 1990s and Clinton years).
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What typically happens in the officer corps is that they go after the dead weight first, the O-5s and O-6s who are past 20 yrs, who refuse to retire for fear that their military job wont transfer well into the civilian world (in the medical corps, this would probably be the MOs who've gone admin, OccMed, PrevMed, things like that . . .) And in some communities, there's definitely a lot of this dead weight. If they could get enough of them to retire, making room for the more junior officers to come up, then the medical corp would be off the hook in terms of vol discharges.
 
Chonal Atresia said:
Thought this might get everyone's attention!

So I actually posed this question in an email to my detailer who manages my specialty as well as about 8-10 others. As of right now, there is no program for MC officers for early voluntary separation from the military. This may (but probably won't) change after the election once sequestration is dealt with and more definitive decisions are made regarding the details of the drawdown (i.e. gross #s, MOSs, speed of exits, etc).
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Currently there are no plans to cut physicians and it's very unlikely that there will be. The military mostly has too many enlisted soldiers. Retention of officers, and especially physicians, is pretty low.

Basically the military has zero need to remove physicians because we usually get out as soon as our obligation is up anyway.
 
Mirror Form said:
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Basically the military has zero need to remove physicians because we usually get out as soon as our obligation is up anyway.
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Is this actually true in a macro sense? I'm sure it is for some specialties, especially those where the majority of attendings are trained via deferment (neurosurg, urology, maybe ortho) but my impression is that there are a lot of O5 and O6 physicians around who are well past their EOS who like the lifestyle at big med centers and are holding on to the bitter end. I have seen this in ophthalmology, primary care and peds specialists, and even some surgical specialties.

Just curious because I haven't seen any data on medical corps retention recently...
 
grotto said:
Is this actually true in a macro sense? I'm sure it is for some specialties, especially those where the majority of attendings are trained via deferment (neurosurg, urology, maybe ortho) but my impression is that there are a lot of O5 and O6 physicians around who are well past their EOS who like the lifestyle at big med centers and are holding on to the bitter end. I have seen this in ophthalmology, primary care and peds specialists, and even some surgical specialties.

Just curious because I haven't seen any data on medical corps retention recently...
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I can understand for primary care docs, but for opthal??
 
grotto said:
Is this actually true in a macro sense? I'm sure it is for some specialties, especially those where the majority of attendings are trained via deferment (neurosurg, urology, maybe ortho) but my impression is that there are a lot of O5 and O6 physicians around who are well past their EOS who like the lifestyle at big med centers and are holding on to the bitter end. I have seen this in ophthalmology, primary care and peds specialists, and even some surgical specialties.

Just curious because I haven't seen any data on medical corps retention recently...
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Many fields are "top heavy," meaning you have numerous O6's sitting in the cush assignments. But that doesn't mean that the military has plenty of O4's for the rest of their billets.

Also, It costs a massive amount of money to fund someone's way through med school and residency, and then you only get four years out of them. I have a hard time believing the military will just be letting a million dollar investment leave early. They'll probably just give out less HPSP scholarships, decrease FAP, etc. if they actually need fewer physicians.

Or, just start tasking the specialties with too many people out as Brigade surgeons . . .
 
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