Whoops we forgot to pay you again!

[The Knife & Gun Club]

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How many of you all have worked for groups/hospitals that routinely forget to pay you?

One of the hospitals I work for these days routinely forgets to pay me, or somehow calculates my pay wrong every single month. I’ve been working with them for 4 months and every single month the paycheck either doesn’t come, or comes but inexplicably just doesn’t have some random amount of money that should be in there. It’s maddening because now I spend hours every month accounting for all my shifts, on call, etc and then emailing people to try to get paid what my contract says I’m owed.

It’s fascinating that every month it’s a different person in the supply chain causing the issue - some manager I’ve never met not approving a shift I already worked. Or they accidentally paid my pay check out to someone else with a similar name, so they can’t pay me until the other person pays them back. And this isn’t some small private practice - it’s an employed position with a huge multi-billion dollar health system that spans 5 states and employs thousands of docs.

I wonder how much a system could pocket if they just didn’t pay all their docs for 1 shift per month. And I wonder how many docs wouldn’t even realize.

 

[BoardingDoc]

I'm sorry, what? This has literally never happened once in my life. I also would absolutely not show up for work if they didn't pay me.

I find the "we paid someone else by mistake so we have to wait for them to pay us back first" particularly amusing. My response would be: "I understand what you're saying, however this is in no way my problem and I expect to be paid regardless of when or if you correct your mistake"

 

[southerndoc]

Forget to pay me once (and cover it the next week), I'm ok with it. Happens twice, and I'm finding another employer/CMG.

 

[JacobMcCandles]

One of the first signs of financial distress for a hospital.

 

[bravotwozero]

Yeah, never happened to me. I'm going to echo everyone else's sentiment, that this is a HUGE red flag, and that you need to GTFO and find another employer. What ticks me off is that there is not much recourse on the employee end if they want to be compensated for the time worked, and the employer is being a total deadbeat and won't pay.

 

[CliveStaples]

There are generally two possibilities here

1) Your employer/contracting service is in financial distress. Not being able to make payroll is generally the sign of imminent demise. It’s hard to bleed a stone, so all you can do is minimize the damage by no longer working at such a place and you are likely to be out any money that hasn’t been paid, until bankruptcy filings and debts are paid (paying missing wages is generally the highest priority in bankruptcy so you’ll generally be paid, but it’ll take a while).

2) Your employer/contracting service is playing games with you. The words you need to learn are “I will be contacting the state Department of Labor.” A simple “promise” that you are going to escalate to the authorities that you have not been paid as agreed upon generally moves the conversation from “oh yeah we’ll get it handled next paycheck” to “hold on let’s see what we can do to fix this right now.”

 

[BoardingDoc]

Yeah, never happened to me. I'm going to echo everyone else's sentiment, that this is a HUGE red flag, and that you need to GTFO and find another employer. What ticks me off is that there is not much recourse on the employee end if they want to be compensated for the time worked, and the employer is being a total deadbeat and won't pay.

Contact the Dept of labor. This will of course burn any bridge you have with them, and won't get you paid if they declare bankruptcy, but if they're simply refusing to pay you, the DoL will sort that out and you'll get your money.

 

[WhatJobDoIPick]

It sounds like the OP is dealing with incompetence rather than nefariousness, which really isn't any better, but likely not a reason to go scorched earth either.

I've dealt with a couple of ***** payroll / department secretaries in my travels. Daily emailing / being a pain in the ass seems to be a good strategy to get what I've wanted out of them.

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

Yea it seems to be incompetence rather than lack of funs - the hospital system in a household name nationwide and has a multi-billion dollar endowment. So not going under any time soon, hopefully.

It’s more just bizzare, I can’t imagine any normal employee being ok with randomly just not getting paid. Luckily I have a couple jobs so it’s not the end of the world but looks like it may be the end of the line for this particular institution.

 

[RustedFox]

It's happened a few times to me, but they always seem like small mistakes that were easy to make, easy to identify, and easy to correct.

 

[bky3c]

Never. I'd be constructing my exit ramp. It's not my job to tell them how to do their job.

 

[Janders]

Entirely agree that:
(1)Never happened to me including working for relatively small local moonlighters
(2)when I’ve heard of this type of situation with physicians it’s smoke before the fire of bankruptcy / failure.
(3) I HAVE heard of this incompetence frequently affecting my nursing colleagues, when it wasn’t financial distress just idiocy. Granted sometimes with their OT hours various bonus structures and incentives their paychecks can be odd… when it became a necessity for them to sit together with highlighters and pens every pay cycle and run their checks and find that 75% of them were paid incorrectly…

… this was the type of thing a friendly word to Csuite / board leadership that payroll incompetence was very literally costing them employees and vast reputational damages in the local area making hiring hard. And when
There is clear systemic underpayment into 401ks it appears to some eyes to perhaps be purposeful fraudulent activity. This did actual get results.

But is easy to advocate as a 3rd party.

The politics of how you escalate this complaint likely matter and will be very local.

 

[hoot504]

Has never happened. You should do something about it.

 

[Saddleshoes]

I had something like that happen to me when I first started at my present hospital...
I walked out and told the powers that be, "I will be back when I get paid."
It took them 48 hours to get things corrected. It has been like a Swiss watch ever since.

 

[emergentmd]

I am sure it was just a mistake but was it just you or ubiquitous? What kind of big company would make this mistake?

 

[thegenius]

How many of you all have worked for groups/hospitals that routinely forget to pay you?

One of the hospitals I work for these days routinely forgets to pay me, or somehow calculates my pay wrong every single month. I’ve been working with them for 4 months and every single month the paycheck either doesn’t come, or comes but inexplicably just doesn’t have some random amount of money that should be in there. It’s maddening because now I spend hours every month accounting for all my shifts, on call, etc and then emailing people to try to get paid what my contract says I’m owed.

It’s fascinating that every month it’s a different person in the supply chain causing the issue - some manager I’ve never met not approving a shift I already worked. Or they accidentally paid my pay check out to someone else with a similar name, so they can’t pay me until the other person pays them back. And this isn’t some small private practice - it’s an employed position with a huge multi-billion dollar health system that spans 5 states and employs thousands of docs.

I wonder how much a system could pocket if they just didn’t pay all their docs for 1 shift per month. And I wonder how many docs wouldn’t even realize.

Sounds fooking awful. I presume you are RVU based.
I hope the other docs are as vigilant as you are.
I would not hesitate to not work a shift if they are violating my contract, or "let them know" that if the pay is not resolved by 2 weeks or something. Obviously you'll need to have a backup plan if that comes around.

Is this a CMG?

 

[RustedFox]

I am sure it was just a mistake but was it just you or ubiquitous? What kind of big company would make this mistake?

If this is in response to me (it's really unclear who your post is directed at), but every mistake I have caught was easy to catch and easy to make/explain (last minute shift swaps that might not have gotten to the proper person in time), one hour of pay missing of a daylight savings time shift (13 hours, not 12), and other small items.

 

[AlmostAnMD]

I literally don't have the attention span to even look at my check

old job/current job could be robbing me of thousands a month and I probably wouldn't notice

as long as I can pay for **** I just don't pay attention and invest what I can

 

[JacobMcCandles]

I literally don't have the attention span to even look at my check

old job/current job could be robbing me of thousands a month and I probably wouldn't notice

as long as I can pay for **** I just don't pay attention and invest what I can

It doesn't matter if you make $10k/year or $1M/year or whether you're a business owner or employee, you should always look at your income and also always understand your taxes (whether you do your own or not).

 

[Tenk]

This has happened to me at my old job when I first started. It was usually just an hour entry error by the person who calculated our hours which was originally done by paper. When we moved to bytebloc it probably only happened a couples times over like 7-8 years.

That being said, I got in the habit of checking my hours worked for every single paycheck. I recommend that to everyone.

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

Sounds fooking awful. I presume you are RVU based.
I hope the other docs are as vigilant as you are.
I would not hesitate to not work a shift if they are violating my contract, or "let them know" that if the pay is not resolved by 2 weeks or something. Obviously you'll need to have a backup plan if that comes around.

Is this a CMG?

No surprisingly - it’s an hourly job, I work a fixed 50 hours per month + 5 calls at this site, and it’s a big New England academic system that does their own payroll and hiring directly.

But the good news is I just gave up and quit. On great terms with the medical director. “Oh yea, we had the same problem with the last guy. Payroll here sucks. He left for … sorry we couldn’t make it work. Best of luck”

Headed back to SW Florida to join a fancy private group. Sadly they don’t do EM, only ICU and hospitalist so will have to hang up the raptors for a bit but it was fun trying to practice 50/50 while it lasted. ED peeps never missed a payment once. On the plus side maybe I’ll get to hang out with @RustedFox.

 

[RustedFox]

No surprisingly - it’s an hourly job, I work a fixed 50 hours per month + 5 calls at this site, and it’s a big New England academic system that does their own payroll and hiring directly.

But the good news is I just gave up and quit. On great terms with the medical director. “Oh yea, we had the same problem with the last guy. Payroll here sucks. He left for … sorry we couldn’t make it work. Best of luck”

Headed back to SW Florida to join a fancy private group. Sadly they don’t do EM, only ICU and hospitalist so will have to hang up the raptors for a bit but it was fun trying to practice 50/50 while it lasted. ED peeps never missed a payment once. On the plus side maybe I’ll get to hang out with @RustedFox.

C'mon down. I'll leave the sun tea out for you. Lemme know via DM where you're at.

 

[Apollyon]

C'mon down. I'll leave the sun tea out for you. Lemme know via DM where you're at.

And take in some spring training!! ⚾

 

[DocEspana]

No surprisingly - it’s an hourly job, I work a fixed 50 hours per month + 5 calls at this site, and it’s a big New England academic system that does their own payroll and hiring directly.

But the good news is I just gave up and quit. On great terms with the medical director. “Oh yea, we had the same problem with the last guy. Payroll here sucks. He left for … sorry we couldn’t make it work. Best of luck”

Headed back to SW Florida to join a fancy private group. Sadly they don’t do EM, only ICU and hospitalist so will have to hang up the raptors for a bit but it was fun trying to practice 50/50 while it lasted. ED peeps never missed a payment once. On the plus side maybe I’ll get to hang out with @RustedFox.

If you get bored and want to come back to the cuban promised land on the atlantic coast, I'll keep a few mint leaves ready for mojitos.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

Yea it seems to be incompetence rather than lack of funs - the hospital system in a household name nationwide and has a multi-billion dollar endowment. So not going under any time soon, hopefully.

It’s more just bizzare, I can’t imagine any normal employee being ok with randomly just not getting paid. Luckily I have a couple jobs so it’s not the end of the world but looks like it may be the end of the line for this particular institution.

This started to happen to a PP that I was previously part of that had financial troubles…I saw the writing on the wall and left. Within 1-2 months, they couldn’t make payroll. They started “rotating” who got paid each month…one month they paid 1/3 of the doctors, the next month another 1/3, etc. Doctors stopped showing up to work shortly thereafter, and the institution imploded probably 10 months after I left.

Whether this is incompetence or a symptom of impending financial collapse, not paying a doctor is a freaking big deal IMO. I would not tolerate it. If it continued, I’d be on the way out very quickly.

 

[southerndoc]

This started to happen to a PP that I was previously part of that had financial troubles…I saw the writing on the wall and left. Within 1-2 months, they couldn’t make payroll. They started “rotating” who got paid each month…one month they paid 1/3 of the doctors, the next month another 1/3, etc. Doctors stopped showing up to work shortly thereafter, and the institution imploded probably 10 months after I left.

Whether this is incompetence or a symptom of impending financial collapse, not paying a doctor is a freaking big deal IMO. I would not tolerate it. If it continued, I’d be on the way out very quickly.

Let me guess. Administrators were paid every month.

 

[DocEspana]

Let me guess. Administrators were paid every month.