HOSPITALIST SALARIES

It might perhaps amuse you greatly to know that hospitals were originally built as a place to die rather than be cured and that it were the churches who 'treated' people. Later on, the modern hospitals as we know them today were borne out of those churches and hence the red-cross symbol. Read more about some hospital history here, if you wish.

In the traditional primary care office physician model, we have a physician working in his office, admitting patients in a hospital and then visiting them - thus time is split checking out the admitted patients and then in the office, making the whole thing a hectic and a money losing affair. Why Money losing ? The time to travel to and fro, the same time could have been spent having new patients in the office, etc. On the other hand, the hospital too loses money contracting that physician with less work hours rather than having him full-time dedicated physician.

Specialized Primary Care Physicians working in hospitals - That's a hospitalist. When the term was originally coined, it implied a physician who worked 25% of his time in a hospital, the remainder in his out-patient office. But now, increasingly, physicians are opting to work 100% time as a hospitalist and enjoy the following:

- a more stable and often better income on a payroll
- no need to worry about office overheads (i.e. expenses like supplies and staff salary) and administrative hassles
- get to dedicate time looking at most sick people who need most attention rather than the less challenging office cases

Representative Mid-career Salaries for Hospitalist positions are as follows:

• New York , NY: $199,000/-
• Seattle, WA : $185,000/-
• Los Angeles, CA: $190,000/-
• Miami, FL is $169,000/-
• Houston, TX: $175,000/-

National Average = $167,000/-

Read this news article which explains why a doctor decided to jump to a hospitalist position and leave his running practice.

According to this great article on how to choose a Hospitalist compensation package, renowned hospitalist Dr. Nelson speaks about the income models as a Hospitalist. He mentions that you may choose to either work on a 1. "straight salary" which is a fixed yearly pay OR 2. base-salary plus incentive model, which he opines will pay you more income that the fixed and 3. Production model which is "liberating" coz' it allows you to work at your own pace and makes you feel as if you "own" the practice.

He says "Young doctors tend to be nervous about how much they’ll earn with incentives and downright scared of pure production models", but "they’ll earn about $190,000 a year if they start from day one on production model and offers them a choice between that option and earning a guaranteed first-year salary of $150,000"


Note: Though this was in the context of a hospitalist, these production based compensation models are being rapidly implemented and preferred at all specialties, where you earn depending on how much you work. Often the newly hired doc is given a first couple of years in salary guarantee and then a production-based pay...


Q. How to become a Hospitalist in America ?

A. ACGME is about to come up with Hospitalist Fellowship training tracks for residents completing training in most primary care specialties like Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Family Medicine, Psychiatry and Obstetrics-Gynecology (OB-Gyn) and even General Surgery but for now, hospitalist jobs can be obtained directly after a residency in the above specialties. There are a few fellowship programs already out there, but more continue to develop. For example, the Cleveland Clinic Hospital Medicine Program

On a Straight / Fixed salary model, Work Hours are are usually 12-hours a day for a week, followed by a week off ! But this may differ - like a pal of mine who works 3 days on and 3 days off, while another guy works every alternate night !

You can obviously learn about a hospitalist from a hospitalist, so read this interview with a hospitalist director :-)


Nice Books:

- My Life as a Hospitalist
- Hospital Medicine Secrets




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