Are you a Physician Looking for an Emergency Medicine Job?
Whether you are a seasoned attending or just coming out of residency, one critical aspect that will affect your career is the type of practice you choose to join. There are many types of Emergency Departments to work at (community, academic, military, rural, urban, etc...), but what I'm referring to here in terms of "practice" is the sort of contract you enter into with your employer. There are 3 basic types of practices, and this article attempts to shed some light on the subject.
The "Democratic Group" practice is a type of practice that has been getting much support in recent years. In this type of group, member physicians are equal partners in terms of having a vote within the groups operations. Members are,in a sense, business partners that share a portion of the collected revenue, vote on important decisions, and are active in the group and subsequently hospital politics and committees. The group is responsible for maintaining its own financial management, human resources, contract management and the like. Such obligations typically entail a senior member of the group to direct such operations. While members of the group are equal, not all employees of the group may have voting rights until a certain period of time has passed (typically 1-5 years) and often times with a significant "buy-in", that is an outlay of money required on the part of the physician prior to becoming a member of the group. The buy-in period typically occurs via reduced reimbursement of the physician until enough is accumulated to become a partner. True Democratic Groups have an "open-books" policy, where the physicians are kept up-to-date with the amount of collections, expenses, and the salaries/reimbursements to the rest of the partners.
In "Contract Management Groups" the physician is an employee of a company that provides EM professional services to a particular ED, that is, the company holds the contract with the hospital. The contract management group deals with all the financial management and human resources aspects, and subsequently pays the physicians either a salary, hourly wage or a productivity based type of pay. The physician may either be employed directly by the group, or work as an independent contractor on behalf of the group. Traditionally, the physician provides clinical care and has little input as to the finances of the group and how they are to be managed. The benefits of working for CMG's are the significant economies of scale that they offer; these groups save much on billing, insurance and hiring costs due to their typically large sizes, and therefore stay competitive in terms of pay with closely located democratic groups.
The last type of practice is the hospital employee, whereby the physician works directly for the hospital entity rather than a physician group. There is no negotiations of the ED contract nor does the physician have to concern themselves with the financial management of the practice. This type of practice ensures that physicians are not vested in their own practice in that they are hospital employees, much like a surgeon or radiologist may be, and therefore have less of a "practice group" mentality but rather a hospital supporting role.
Finding Emergency Medicine jobs does not have to be difficult, and in fact if you look around you'll see more opportunities than there are physicians to fill them. Ensure that you understand the differences in the practice types and how your particular personality and career aspiration may fit in the above models.
Ask your fellow colleagues what they think about working for the different types of practices, and look for a robust list of Emergency Medicine jobs at emedcentral.com, a professional networking site designed for you to land a great job and research emergency departments.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Elad_Bicer,_M.D.
