I had a previous job that was based at a large HCA hospital, working for a group whose biggest contract was with HCA, and I learned a bit about the direction their corporate leadership is wanting to go with their pathology services. They are wanting to terminate contracts with all private groups across their 200+ hospitals and internalize their pathology services under their IRL/FPS subsidiary. They have done this in the Florida, Denver, and Kansas City markets and a few others. The last I heard, their IRL/FPS cronies were working on some places in Texas. They come in, announce they are terminating the contract, and start advertising nationally but let you know that they would love for you to stay on as their employee, as long as you are willing to have your vacation time cut in half, retirement benefits cut to nothing and future compensation cut significantly. They offer salaries in the uppers 200s for experienced pathologists, and I believe it is low 200s for those with less than 5 years experience. Most people who can, walk away. They don't seem to have a lot of trouble filling positions because of the horrendous job market/oversupply combined with their very low standards (basically just looking for warm bodies). These standards, from what I can tell, are a reflection of their overall standards system wide. There is a degradation of services when they take over the pathology, but it may be no worse than the overall degradation that occurs hospital wide after they buy a hospital. I would not want to be a patient in an HCA hospital. I also would be wary of joining any groups that depend largely on HCA contracts, as those contracts seem to be at very high risk of being terminated in the near future.
I believe the HCA residencies are part of some pipeline initiative, trying to give themselves a continual supply of minions in support of their pathology services subsidiary. Since they don't care much about quality to begin with, I doubt they'd be too concerned about the quality of education in their program or quality of the pathologists they are turning out.
