Working for Kaiser?

[luft]

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I'm in the middle of my third year of psych residency and have started seriously pondering what exactly I want to do once I am done with residency. I have heard mixed things about Kaiser and wanted to see what you guys have heard/experienced. I have heard of people who say that you will just be a work horse for Kaiser and will have a lot of pressure to minimize expenses. In my current program we do not work directly with Kaiser, but Kaiser does use beds in our psych facility and have their own doctors take care of those patients. From what I have heard from these doctors (mostly second hand) is that they are fairly happy with their jobs with Kaiser and feel that they are able to take good care of their patients. I know that in other parts of our psych facility where Kaiser does not have their own beds and we serve as kind of an emergency overflow when Kaiser's own hospitals are full, the attendings are usually happy that they have a kaiser patient as opposed to some of the more, um, shall we say, aggressive insurance companies. Kaiser wont be "encouraging" us (by flat out telling us they wont pay for any more days) to discharge the patient as soon as there is the slightest inkling the patient may not kill themselves at home. Of course, this is all inpatient and I know next to nothing about how the outpatient side of things are run with Kaiser and I was personally leaning more towards outpatient at the present time. So what do you guys think?

 

[michaelrack]

From what I've heard, you should only work at Kaiser if you plan to stay there long enough to vest in their pension plan.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=650380&highlight=kaiser

N=1, but I know of one former residency colleague who is quite happy there.

 

[kumar28]

anyone else have any info on working for kaiser? Do they generally pay less than private practice?

 

[atsai3]

One of my friends moved to the west coast to work for Kaiser. Very happy there. Infrastructure sounds fantastic.

Re: private practice, sure, you could make more charging $600 for a half-hour private practice psychopharm consultation like other prominent veteran psychiatrists we know of in the Pacific Northwest, but overall my friend's starting pay sounded competitive with what other newbie attendings might make.

 

[PistolPete]

Recently spoke with a child psychiatrist who works for Kaiser when he was covering for my attending and he said that he loves working for them and that they pay "very well" (although I didn't push for specifics). This is in California. His afternoon calendar showed a mix of 1 hr and 30 minute appointments, with the last one at 4:30. Doesn't sound too bad!

 

[whopper]

This early off you might just want to try it out. I knew I wouldn't have been happy doing any job right after residency because I didn't know what else was out there. Only after doing plenty of things, e.g. private-practice, state hospital, group homes, forensic psychiatric units, ACT teams, etc. did I get a feeling of what I should stay in for the next several years without thinking if I was missing out on something.

Even now I'm not certain because I keep getting job offers I regret turning down, but I'm much more thanks to trying the other things.