Are any primary care docs happy in the private sector these days? It seems all I hear from my friends and colleagues out there now is sheer misery. The rare exceptions were small or solo practices run by the physicians, but frankly the economics of modern primary care have driven them under by now.
I may bitch about many aspects of my public sector practice, but honestly I do love a lot of it, especially the amount of time I get to spend with patients. That alone is worth lesser pay; to not be paid on productivity.
When I was a young 20-something managing a Domino’s Pizza in Chicago, I turned down promotion multiple times. Here’s the sitch: DPI had moved into Chicago fairly recently and of the 37 stores in the city, only 7 were actually turning a profit. My store was one with rising sales, so they wanted me to move up to supervisor, where you oversee 7-10 stores. The problem was why they were looking for a supervisor: every six months or so they’d take someone like me who was getting results at a single store, promote him or her to supervisor expecting them to get similar results at multiple stores, and fire them when that didn’t happen in a few months. So the mediocre managers plodded along for years, while they promoted and fired the best talent they had. I passed, which got me classified as a “burnout” at 25 years old. DPI sold the stores to a franchisee who basically told me to take the promotion to supervisor or leave - I left.
Not to speak for Tibby, but for most of the disgruntled docs I know, it’s the bosses.
A decade or two ago the norm was solo or small group practices, and even the larger group practices were mostly owned and run by the physicians. Now even the tiniest backwater clinic is owned by a big soulless corporation, the doctor works for the money man, and the money man never lets him forget it.
Yes, exactly. Doctor J and Ivylass. Face-to-face patient contact is the best of our practice experience. I love my patients and I believe most of them love me…or at least like me. It’s all of the other crap we have to deal with that that is the problem: spending too much time with EMR charting, insurance compliance, HIPPA compliance, PQRS, MIPS, [del]Tits[/del]…sorry, I don’t know where that came from, etc. etc. I just want to treat my patients and be compensated fairly for the work that I do. No more, no less.
Several time since I started working for Da Jungle; I can’t afford the pay cut.
I am at the basement level of employeeship. To go to the next level I would have to agree to:
a) Working at least one weekend day - all positions run Sunday to Wednesday or Wednesday to Saturday - basically 4 10s
b) Going into a rotating schedule where you don’t know quarter to quarter which of the two you will have. This quarter and the next you may be “front half”, the next quarter “back” and the following back to “front”.
I do some side things that earn me about 5 times what I get as a part-timer at Da Jungle but to do those I need to be able to commit to time/dates as much as one year out. With my current M-F no problemo. As a Production Assistant MAJOR problemo. And since a PA only earns a bit more than double what I do now ------------- no brainer and no thanks. I’m happy just where I am.
Its not the only time in my life I’ve turned down promotion but it is the current one.