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Post hospice medical director contract question
Author: maura
Date: Sep 9, 2007 10:24 am

I am being offered a contract as hospice medical director in my area for $450 weekly. I am told that I will be attending weekly interdisc meetings (about 2 hours) and will need to carry a pager 24/7--reportedly only with several calls weekly. I may need to make a few home visits as consultant yearly. Obviously, there is more--help with JCAHO surveys, QI, community outreach and internal education to name a few. I doubt this is "normal" financial support and suspect there may be some national standards I could access to buttress my position. I don't really care about the money but I am an academic and need to have my time honestly supported so I don't get into RVU trouble back home. Any advice or references would be much appreciated. Time is of the essence since I am toe to toe at the moment with the budget boys and girls. Thanks for your help.

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+ Re:hospice medical director contract question (by Weissman on 09/10/2007)
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.
Re:hospice medical director contract question (by iburge on 10/05/2007)
I am a hospice manager in soutn alabama. I just updated my medical director contract. He is a very busy oncoligist and anyway he gets $1500/month for a weekly IDT (about 1 hour) and does help us when we need something and can't get the primary MD about once every week or two. Otherwise, he does a home visit about once every two years and signs our care plans, election and so forth. It sounds like your agency is seeking a little much for the salary offered, unless you are just doing this a sort of volenteer thing.

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