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How to become a permanent locum tenens physician

Posted on March 9, 2017January 30, 2021 by SmartMoneyMD

In Latin, locum tenens literally means “placeholder”. Just like in any profession, there are “placeholder” jobs in medicine. Corporations, hospitals, and medical groups use locum tenens often as a means to continue their line of business while looking for a permanent solution. For the locum tenens physician, this can have potential benefits.

You have to be in the right profession.

There are certain specialties in medicine that work well with temporary workers, particularly those where continuity of care is not needed. These specialties include emergency room physicians (like WCI), anesthesiologists (like PoF), interventional radiologists, critical care physician, and hospitalists. These professionals care for people who are either acutely ill or only need services temporarily (like during gallbladder surgery). Once the patient’s condition changes, this specialist’s services are no longer needed.

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Specialties that require no direct patient contact like radiology or pathology also lend to temporary workers. You can work from essentially anywhere and at anytime. Radiology works great for those who like to stay up late at night.

If you are in any of these specialties, you have potential to be creative with your life and find an unconventional means to make a living and care for patients.

Locum tenens for the adventurous doctor.

I know an emergency room doctor who lives in San Francisco but works in Minnesota. I call that geographical arbitrage for the city slicker. You get your higher reimbursements in the Midwest but still get to live in a large city with an inflated housing market and nightlife (No offense to everyone in Minnesota). If he wanted to pick up a few shifts at the local urgent care in Northern California, he can make even more money on the side.

You might also like: Where you live Impacts How You Build Your Wealth

As a temporary doctor, you can have great opportunities exploring new cities while still getting paid. Obviously this works best if you are either single or have no children, but I know doctors who bring their family with them when they take on locums assignments.

Locum tenens as a financial strategy.

If your profession is in high demand, you might be able to find multiple locums position in the same city! The ability to do this is contingent upon living in a relatively large city or one with populous surrounding suburbs. Hospitalists come to my mind as a profession that allows for this flexibility.

Most locum tenens positions confer the following benefits:

subsidized housing
subsidized travel costs
subsidized meals

Suppose that Dr. X is a locum tenens physician for four hospitals in Phoenix. Each hospital subsidizes a fixed cost of $1000 per week of work plus travel expenses. Let’s say that Dr. X only works at two hospitals in a given month. She has $2000 in housing costs that could comfortably cover a month’s rent in Phoenix! Guess what? She also gets two roundtrip tickets to a city of her choice due to the travel arrangements. This could be anywhere in the country too! This includes Hawaii or Alaska! (No offense to LiveFreeMD, I’m not sure why anyone would want to vacation regularly in Alaska though) ?

Best of all, Dr. X is an independent contractor. This means that she is a sole proprietor who can open an Individual 401k to shell away significant portions of income ($53k!) each year while being a doctor. This arrangement also allows for more flexible business-related deductions for further income maximization.

The benefit of part-time work is that you can work on your own time. No, you won’t get dedicated vacation days, but you could theoretically pile up your shifts and take an extended vacation. Spend a month in Argentina. Hike through the Serengeti. You can’t do that if you’re shackled to a regimented work schedule.

The disadvantages of locum tenens.

The advantage of being a temporary worker is also the disadvantage of being a temporary worker. You get no stability. No stability in income, location, or lifestyle. Your job can be a goldmine for several months and disappear when hospitals find a more permanent worker. Sure, you get paid a higher rate, but you pay your own taxes, arrange your malpractice coverage, and other logistics. There are headaches to running your own business. Some doctors simply don’t have the desire or energy to manage logistics outside of medical practice.

Most families with school-aged children aren’t going to be able to travel for weeks at a time without logistical problems. Sure you can pull your kid out from society and homeschool them, but parents in New York City are already making sure their kids play nicely at their elite private Kindergarten schools so that they can get into Yale for college. Good luck going up against that crowd.

How does this pertain to me?

If you’re a plastic surgeon working in a cosmetics practice, there is no financial, lifestyle, or practical gain in becoming a locum tenens doctor. If you are still in medical school deciding on a specialty, you should be aware that these opportunities exist. I probably wouldn’t base my residency choice solely on whether you could make a permanent career out of temporary jobs, but rather on your interests both in and out of medicine. I know doctors who just like to climb mountains and exercise in their free time. These guys would do great working temporary jobs because they can spend their free time outside of medicine. I know doctors who enjoy practicing medicine—they probably would not be truly suited for a full-time part-time job.

Have you considered working as a locum tenens physician?

(Photo courtesy of Flickr)

Perils of being a physician leader

Posted on January 30, 2017January 30, 2021 by SmartMoneyMD

You’ve been pulling long hours at your practice for the past five years, and are finally building a sizable patient following. Your hospital is making record profits in part to your labor. One day you get a call from the administration. Will you finally get that raise that you’ve desperately needed? No such luck, but the administration invites you to attend their exclusive meetings. You say, “yes” without truly understanding what the job entails.

You would be lucky to have these chairs in your hospital conference room

Guess what? You’ve now become a physician leader. Sometimes your hospital or group may spin the title in euphemistic terminology like “executive team”, “management team”, or “lead provider” (shudder). No matter how this title is spun, the bottom line is that you’ve just volunteered for more work. Don’t think that you can cut back on your clinical hours just because you have that fancy new title. That extra $1,000 every quarter on your paycheck will SURELY cover those extra hours of your life spent in meetings.

Did you just sign away your life?

Becoming a healthcare administrator can promote your career.

There are merits to becoming a leader. Most doctors in every stage of our careers still report to someone else. As a medical student, you reported to residents, attendings, and even nurses! As an attending physician, we still report to our chairmen, the insurance companies, and other regulators. There is always someone who is above you at any point of your career. When you become a physician leader, you start gaining that authority to help make our healthcare system better.

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The second you move onto an administrative role, you automatically acquire authority. Authority to make decisions. Authority to change the silly policies that you hated to deal with when you were a peon. These changes can be as insignificant as replacing the low-grade coffee stirrers in the break room. How about getting rid of that noontime mandatory team huddle that you always missed because your clinic runs two hours late? Done!

More importantly, you gain the opportunity to grow your career as a healthcare administrator. You get to see the side of the healthcare system outside of direct patient care. You will see how complex, confusing, and inefficient our healthcare system really is. This is where you can actually shine. What goals can you implement in your hospital to improve healthcare delivery? How does the revenue cycle for an orthopedic clinic work?

You might actually be a whiz at healthcare policy. That would be a powerful skill to have. Instead of fighting hypertension in the clinic, a strong healthcare policy reform could prevent the same disease in thousands of people without stepping foot into the clinic! There is real opportunity in administration to lift yourself out of direct patient care.

Becoming a healthcare administrator can destroy your health.

This picture is more representative of hospital conference room chairs.

Look, being a leader is not all fun and fame. Who knows how many failed administrators never become CEOs, start up their own consulting firms only to fail, or even quit medicine altogether. Administration is not a sure path to lifelong success.

We all know that being a physician leader involves added work. You have to hustle through your patients and then rush to meetings afterward. The hustle is actually not the hard part. You already know how to hustle. The problem is that progress with any hustle takes time. You will fail. Many people will hate you for implementing changes. It may take years before you realize whether you’ve accomplished anything, and that can take a heavy toll on our psyche. You might burnout.

No one is immune to burnout. I get notices almost every month that CEOs or senior staff members of local hospitals getting replaced. Some take on roles in other organizations. Others vanish. I doubt that every single one of them actually left their prior jobs because they were offered wildly lucrative offers elsewhere. I bet that most of them burned out from their long hours and lack of job satisfaction. Don’t think that you are immune to administrative burnout simply because you are a doctor.

Becoming an administration adds tension between your colleagues.

Once that title of “lead physician” gets appended to your name, your colleagues will view you differently. That inherent trust that you shared is no longer as apparent. That is a weird feeling. Whether or not you actually continue to suffer through the pain of clinic, useless meetings, and stupid online compliance training makes no difference. Your colleagues probably think that you actually know something that they don’t. The lack of certainty is a powerful motivator for skepticism.

You probably aren’t going to be besties with the administration either.

If you can’t be friends with your fellow doctors, you’ve still got your administrative posse right?

Wrong.

<insert cynicism> Half of your hospital’s management team aren’t physicians (or providers if you’ve already been brainwashed). Some of them may not have any formal professional degrees other than “B.S.” or some made-up title like “DFO” (Director of Financial Operations). Since this is a financial website, I’ll add that all of these people have salaries higher than your best friend who got a USMLE Step 1 score of 260—this is considered a high score—but decided to go into family medicine. <end cynicism>

This administrative team expects you, the physician leader, to be on board with their recommendations. Some of these recommendations will be unfavorable. Do you have to be a sycophant and agree with their decisions? Or do you risk your future career as CEO by going against the grain? Will you always be outvoted since you are the sole physician on the board? What can you actually accomplish if you don’t already agree with the existing administration?

Will you be happy as a physician leader?

I’m all about happiness. If you don’t like what you do, you probably aren’t going to be motivated to improve your skills. If you dread the 5 hours a week of additional meetings in addition to your clinical practice, you’re probably not going to be good at your job. However, if you love spending a few hours every evening planning for your meetings, you might actually be a great administrator.

“A jack of all trades is a master of none.” There are only 168 hours in a week. I know a vascular surgeon who works 85 hours a week. Imagine adding on another 8 hours of your weekly life going to meetings. For most people this is unsustainable. You will break down. If you pare down your clinical activities, you might not actually have enough time to maintain your clinical or surgical skills either.

There is a fine line between the clinician and administrator. Plenty of us do both, both are we sacrificing our abilities to perform one for the sake of doing both?

Have you considered becoming a physician leader?

(Photo courtesy of Flickr)

Just receive your first job offer? What should you do next?

Posted on January 13, 2017January 30, 2021 by SmartMoneyMD

Congratulations! After a decade of slaving away in your medical training, you’ve got your first job offer in hand! If you’re really lucky, you might have several offers to evaluate. But wait, there’s all this legalese and gibberish—nothing makes sense!

Do you just hire a contract lawyer and be done with it? How much is a good rate for a contract review anyway? You call around to your friends and colleagues who graduated a year or two before you to inquire. They give you some advice, but it turns out that they might not be too familiar either. What should you do?

There are some fundamental aspects to understanding job contracts that everyone should know. These are the things to follow:

Have someone review your contract.

Yes, this means shelling out some money and having a contract lawyer or a review company who is familiar with your area look at the contract. As much as you want to save money, this is money well spent. The last thing you want to do is move your family to a new city for a new job only to realize that you have to take call every other night even though there are ten doctors in your practice!

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This may cost you several hundred dollars up to a thousand, and it will sting especially if you are in your first job. This is something that I don’t recommend skimping out on.

Someone who is familiar with your area may know that there are certain rules or laws that pertain only to your city. Moreover, they may know the history and track record of hospitals or medical practices in the area. That information by itself is invaluable.

Read the contract yourself.

Hiring someone to review your contract simply isn’t enough. You need to spend some time reviewing the legalese as well so that you can be informed about what your contract reviewer is going to say. Here are a few key items that I considered:

Salary: How much are you going to get paid? How long is that guaranteed for? Are the any incentives to exceed the standard salary? I would compare the offer salary to what is considered the norm in your field (MGMA, AMGA), and how many years that you have been in practice. For instance, there are different ranges for starting salaries depending on your given specialty. Try to find out what they are, and figure out where you stand in the range.
Noncompete: Some contracts have restrictive covenants that prevent you from working within a certain distance and duration of the employer in the event that you decide to leave the group. The laws vary depending on which state you are in, and you can determine if any of these rules are enforceable. How much do these laws actually matter to you? If there is any possibility that you would need to stay in the area if you left your job, you should consider getting this clause removed or negotiated.
Growth: Will your job be any different after your first few years? Do you have any possibility of becoming a partner, owning any equity in the practice, or expanding? Is there any real estate in the practice that you could potentially own?
Time off: Is there PTO? Does it accrue? Is it enough for your needs?
Maternity leave: This is huge. Some hospitals or employers will stiff you on the maternity leave. They may not have a clause at all for this. If there is any possibility that you would need to invoke this benefit, negotiate this in or walk away.
Locations: Some practices have multiple offices in different locations in different cities. How much do you want to travel? Do you have to fly to satellite offices (Yes, this can happen)?

Compare your offer with others that you might have received.

You can really learn quite a bit if you have two different offers on the table. There is unlikely going to be one ideal offer that is a no brainer. You will have to settle on certain conditions. Some practices or hospitals are just arranged differently. If everyone else in the group is taking call for the entire state, it’s not likely that you can get away with negotiating that out of your contract.

Consider the overall terms of the contract.

This category includes everything that is not objective. How is the writing in the contract? Are your potential employers sticklers? Do they nickel and dime you? This really calls upon your Spider Sense. Some of us are great at identifying things that could go wrong. Others, not so much. How flexible is the employer? Do they want to hire you badly enough to amend their rules?

Remember. Don’t push your luck and burn bridges. If an employer is unwilling to agree to your terms, don’t get angry. If the subject in contention is a deal breaker for you, just walk away. I think that most people are willing to be open amenable to negotiation as long as it does not put them in a financially or logistically challenging position.

Good luck!

What other terms have you considered in contract negotiation?

(Photo courtesy of Flickr)

On being ill as a doctor

Posted on December 14, 2016January 30, 2021 by SmartMoneyMD

While full of medical knowledge, doctors are still human. We get illnesses, aches, and pains, just like everyone else. One of the worse feelings about getting ill, is that we are still subject to the same rules, medications, and limitations that medicine has—there is no magic pill that I hide in my back pocket for a rainy day.

Case in point: I am currently fighting through a severe bout of “pinkeye”, or viral conjunctivitis. This is the same highly contagious red eye disease that your five-year old gets. I picked it up likely over the holidays or from a patient or coworker.

In the most severe form.

imagine that these are your eyes except that they are also swollen shut

In ophthalmic terms, this means pre auricular nodes, chemosis, bilaterally, eyelid edema, 4+ injection…the works. My right eye has been swollen shut, and I’m currently in day 8 of this debilitating condition with no end in sight. I’ve been forced to take off the past five days from work, and nearly reaching short-term disability status (how embarrassing!). These conditions can last a whole month.

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Boy has it been miserable. I’ve been in pain and blurry most of the week, and taking the usual concoction of medications that are given—all of these are simply treatments to help reduce severity of the disease, but does not shorten the clinical course. Add to the ocular symptoms the usual set of symptoms we experience from a head cold: headache, nasal congestion, fatigue—you’ve got one miserable camper. What this means is that I will have to let this evil virus run its course.

Talk about disrupting productivity.

Then your mind plays tricks on you. Certain uncommon, but possible sequela of getting pinkeye can permanently disrupt one’s vision. How will I end up? Will I have to invoke the disability insurance that I hoped I’d never have to use? Will I have to downgrade my lifestyle (fortunately for being on a mission to reach FIRE, I have been tweaking my financial self).

But hey, on the bright side, I get to stay at home, with a hot coffee in my hands, a box of tissues on one side, and a furry feline friend on the other:

Mandated time off isn’t bad at all!

(Stock photo above courtesy of Flickr)

How Much Net Worth Should Doctors Have?

Posted on April 11, 2016January 1, 2018 by SmartMoneyMD

how much net worth should doctors have Most doctors will spend anywhere from eleven to sixteen years after high school to become a fully trained and practicing physician. This is a long time to delay your income and life. Most of us go through four years of college, four to five years of medical school, and anywhere from three to seven (or more) years of residency and fellowship. Assuming that we started at age 18, we finish this journey around age 29 to 34. The only upside I can think of being old is that most of our patients expect older doctors to have more experience! (Who do you really want doing your robotic prostatectomy: a 38 year old youthful appearing surgeon or a 64 year old greying surgeon who has been practicing for thirty years?)

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Since most doctors graduate with debt, we do have to play our cards strategically to “catch up”. Unfortunately, the average doctor will not become richer than an average aggressive financially savvy IT guy or white collar worker, we can come close.

Here’s how the net worth of how a financially conscientious Hospitalist progresses:

Most Hospitalists who do not pick up a huge number of additional shifts or locum jobs have a relatively narrow range of income. On average, we expect a starting salary around $200,000, which may increase to $220,000 the second year, $250,000 the third year, and perhaps a cap around $260,000 in year 4 and beyond. For simplicity, we’d assume an effective federal income tax rate of 25%. Let’s also assume that this Hospitalist has a student debt of $250,000 upon finishing residency. We can also ignore any investment growth on the savings or interest payments on the loans.

	Gross Income	Net Income after tax	Expenses	Savings	Net worth
Year 1	$200,000	$150,000	$30,000	$120,000	-$130,000
Year 2	$220,000	$165,000	$40,000	$125,000	-$5,000
Year 3	$250,000	$187,500	$40,000	$147,500	$142,500
Year 4	$260,000	$195,000	$50,000	$145,000	$287,500
Year 5	$260,000	$195,000	$50,000	$145,000	$332,500
Year 6	$260,000	$195,000	$60,000	$135,000	$467,500

In this simplistic example, the average Hospitalist who starts work at age 29 will come out of student debt by age 32 if she saves relatively aggressively. Those of us who have dug ourselves out of a significant amount of debt can agree how therapeutic that last payment can be. The average doctor can get herself out of debt relatively quickly with a clear strategy to tackle the debt. Obviously the growths are going to be different depending upon your profession. An ophthalmologist who starts out with a measly $165,000 salary will need to budget more carefully than the neurosurgeon who will command $500,000 out the door.

Based on this example above, we should be able to make several general conclusions regarding the financial situation of most doctors:

We should all be able to repay our student loans within the first five years of practice assuming that you started with an average amount of debt. Most of us should be able to repay it all within the first three years if we wanted to.
The average doctor may not become a millionaire by age 40 on her own income, but all of us should be millionaires by age 45. Unfortunately a million dollars really isn’t a whole lot of money now, but it sure as hell is nicer than what the rest of the general population can earn.
We can all make a decent living in medicine. It still isn’t easy after your grueling training, but with today’s aging population we do have job security.
You will not likely be able to afford the $3,000,000 mansion in Miami. Some doctors will be able to do solely through pre-existing family wealth, higher paying specialties, or through alternative streams of income.

Let’s take a look at another doctor who is an Intensivist (someone who works in the intensive care unit). Assume that she also comes out of fellowship with $250,000 in student loans. She will also have an effective income tax around 30%:

	Gross Income	Net Income after tax	Expenses	Savings	Net worth
Year 1	$300,000	$210,000	$30,000	$180,000	-$70,000
Year 2	$325,000	$227,500	$40,000	$187,000	$117,000
Year 3	$350,000	$245,000	$40,000	$205,000	$322,000
Year 4	$375,000	$262,500	$50,000	$212,500	$534,500
Year 5	$400,000	$280,000	$50,000	$230,000	$764,500
Year 6	$400,000	$280,000	$60,000	$230,000	$994,500

In this scenario, the Intensivist will most likely become a millionaire by year six. It’s interesting how doctor income varies among the specialties.

What is your target net worth after ten years on the job? How does it match up to these examples?

(Photo courtesy of Flickr)

Having insurance doesn’t mean healthcare is free

Posted on April 3, 2016April 1, 2016 by SmartMoneyMD

One of my pet peeves is simply the complex healthcare system that I knowingly work in. Hypocritical, yes. What is unfortunate and frustrating is that the majority of our patients don’t really understand how the system works, and assume that doctors are making a killing off of the healthcare system. Doctors, too, are mostly unaware of how the healthcare system works. If doctors knew exactly how the system worked and learned to save their earnings, then there wouldn’t be as much of a need for physician financial education. Case in point:

The bill that your insurance company mails you does not reflect your doctor’s income.

This is the number one deceit. Your patient sees you in the office, and the insurance company sends her a statement of performed procedures and charges made. The charges on the bill absolutely do NOT indicate the amount that your doctor receives from the insurance company. In fact, I have had instances where the insurance company actually denied my claims, sent my patient a billing statement of charges, and have a patient comment on “how much I made on her 25 minute patient visit”. Disgusting. I didn’t even get paid for taking care of a patient, and my patient thinks I got paid a ton for her visit. So much for altruism.

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The copay also does not reflect how much a doctor is paid.

Another one of my patients commented that her copay went up to $50 per visit from last year, and that she hopes that “I am getting a good raise” now that I’ve raised my copayment charges. Score one for the insurance carriers. They’ve successfully convinced the public that higher copays equate to more money to the doctors.

Having health insurance doesn’t mean that you never have to pay for care.

A common patient complaint I receive is that they are upset that the insurance company did not pay for all of the care. That is the definition of a deductible! One of my colleagues complained to me that one of his patients basically received a free knee replacement because he refused to pay for any of the deductible for the surgery, and was not willing to pay for any of the postoperative medications. My colleague still had to see the patient for all of the postoperative care. It was okay, because the patient was sporting a new Apple Watch and iPad Pro in the waiting room.

You can still win the lifestyle and financial game even in medicine.

Despite the skepticism and cynicism with how broken our healthcare system is, we can still win the game. Remember, we entered this profession to care for patients. No matter how misguided our patients are with how the healthcare system works, we can still deliver great care to them and earn a decent living out of it. Here’s how to do it:

Win the lifestyle game. Find a way to carve out a four-day workweek. Maximize your productivity while you are at the hospital, and minimize the amount of work that you take home. Know your value, and grow your value. Prevent your obsolescence to avoid getting fired.
Win the financial game. Save more than you earn. Hustle to increase your income. Learn to become a successful doctor. Generate your income stream and work hard.

What other strategies have your implemented to win the financial and lifestyle game?

(Photo courtesy of Ubi Desperare Nescio)

A Female Doctor’s Guide To A Raise

Posted on July 18, 2015 by SmartMoneyMD

As doctors, we deserve to be compensated for our hard work. We dedicate at least a decade of our lives to acquire the privilege to care for people and the rest of our careers doing so. Unfortunately many of us get taken advantage of despite putting in the hard work. Prior to taking our jobs, we try to educate ourselves by consulting with our predecessors, going to seminars, and having lawyers review our contracts. That is still no substitute to experience in the workforce, so most of us still make our career decisions based on limited (and sometimes inaccurate) information.

Female doctors have to work even harder, as medicine is still predominantly a male dominated profession. You have to work harder to get what you deserve, but it can be done. Fortunately the rules for getting compensated fairly as a doctor are similar to that of most other corporate jobs. The following is a step-by-step list to get that raise you deserve.

Know How Much You Are Worth

Your value to the practice or company is determined by what you can offer. As a doctor, that means that you must know the value of your medical knowledge to your boss. Are you the only person in the state who can deal with certain medical conditions? Are there a hundred more of you in the same city? Are you expendable? How much revenue ARE you bringing into the practice, and how much CAN you bring to the practice?

Before you begin your negotiations, you need data. You need to know approximately how much revenue each one of your consultations, procedures, or surgeries bring into the practice. You need to know the spread of insurance payors of your patients, and ideally the range of reimbursements you receive per carrier. You need to know what your collections rate for billed charges are. You need to know your practice expenses too (if they open the books to you). This includes all operational expenses of the department, like employee salaries, benefits, fixed costs…etc.

If you are employed by the hospital, you will obviously not know its operational expenses. Focus on what you bring to the table. That is your bargaining chip.

Obviously the tips above are contingent upon your effort in the practice as well. If you truly are not seeing many patients and bringing in money to the bosses, then your bargaining power diminishes substantially. However if you are actually very busy but stuck with non-revenue patients, then you still have negotiating power.

Know How Much Others Are Making

Salary negotiation is also dependent on the income of your peers both in your group and in the local vicinity. How many male and female doctors in your profession are there in town? You must have a baseline to start with. If your current salary is significantly lower than others within your group, you should have better negotiating power (if your boss wishes to treat you fairly).

Formulate Your Strategy And Be Assertive

This is most critical for female doctors. Women are traditionally more timid in male-dominated professions, and are expected to acquiesce. This stereotype and tradition transgresses through the entire workplace. When a male doctor asserts himself to the mid-levels, he is accepted to be in charge and headstrong. When a female doctor does the same, she is seen as a b*tch. The same requests by different genders are unfortunately interpreted differently.

You must be firm when you make your requests, and be logical as well. Administrators love data even if the decision to raise your salary is subjective. A sample argument that you can work from is as follows:

In the past year, I have seen a growth in patient visits of 25%. This has translated to 500 patient visits to date and 8000 rvu’s generated. My professional fees total $1.1 million, and I have also brought in $2 million in technical charges to the practice. To date, my total revenue and patient visits exceed that of all the senior partners in the group. I feel that I have built up the practice significantly, and have a steady referral stream from Dr. Outside, who previously was not referring to our practice. I believe that a $100k bonus for my effort for the past year is very reasonable. I hope to continue growing the practice in the future.

Reassess On A Regular Basis

If you don’t get exactly what you deserve, keep trying. You will never get more if you never ask. It doesn’t hurt to ask as long as you remain professional and provide evidence of your work. This applies not only to salary, but also with logistics of practicing medicine like call schedules and fair division of patient care.

It continues onward into partnership as well. When you start looking into practice real estate, buy-ins, and stock, you want to ask questions to make sure you are as informed as possible and you are getting what you want and deserve.

Conclusion

Obviously it takes effort to do all that I have mentioned, but nowhere as difficult as the path to become a doctor. You simply have to stay organized, state your case, and keep trying.

What strategies have you implemented to obtain a raise? Let us know below!

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