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Billing and Financial

In Reply To: hospice medical director contract question
Next Reply: Re:Re:hospice medical director contract question
Next Message: Re:hospice medical director contract question

Post Re:hospice medical director contract question
Author: Weissman [CAPC/PCLC Faculty]
Date: Sep 10, 2007 3:40 pm

Hello--you are very wise to be asking these questions. It would be good if there was data to compare your offer to, but I am unaware of good data, particularly for academic physicians working part time in hospice. I have worked for three different hospice agencies over the past 20 years while being "full time" in academic medicine and I have negotatied contracts for two of my junior faculty who worked for different hospice agencies. Here is what I can tell you:

  1. The expectations of the hospice agency for your time and services varies widely-this includes the range of both patient and non-patient care activities. You need to get an explicit listing of expected duties before you agree to any salary offer.
  2. If you are simultaneously working to build an academic palliative care program, do you anticipate that your work with hospice will enhance or detract from this goal? I've seen several academic programs falter as their one and only doctor was spending increasing time working with a community hospice program. I really encourage such cross fertilization--but just be sure what your personal goals are and how working in hospice fits with your academic work.
  3. If you figure one IDT per week, adding in travel time, at a minimum, that is 1/2 day of work per week--or .1 FTE. Add in 24/7 call and it sounds like a minimum of 0.2 FTE. Multiply .2 times your current salary and see how this matches against your offer. Don't forget to add in your fringe benefits to the equation.
  4. Most academics who do part-time hospice medical work don't care about the money (to use your words)-but in fact, you should. I assume you are Board Certiied in HPM or at least working toward same. Thus, you should be well compensated for your knowledge and skills--and in the "real world"--that equals money.

Good luck. Feel free to contact me with further questions.

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+ Re:Re:hospice medical director contract question (by slmare on 09/14/2007)
Dr.Weissman; I would like your opinion on the following compensation package we are contemplating with a new provider in our Palliative Medicine program. We have recruited a Hem/Onc physician at 24,000 a year to work 4 hours one day a week in our Pall Med Dept. We are allowing him to bill any consults he sees for our department through his private practice and keep the revenue. He will also take call every 4th weekend for our mother organization's hospice program. 14,000 of his salary will be out of my budget in Pall Med and the other 10,000 out of the hospice budget. This physician is not HPM certified but is working towards this. There are no other "hidden" responsibilites for this physician. I feel this is a fair compensation package as does the physician. However, I would like your opinion as I would like to have the extra assurance from someone on the outside looking in, that we are being fair to this provider in comparison to what other programs are paying their providers.

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