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How much do Psychiatrists really make?


Mustang92

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19 hours ago, MBDTF said:

What's the breakdown like for billing in Ontario for in-patient vs outpatient psychiatrists?

Its variable.  Inpatient billing codes for your time-based billing codes are about $10 higher for inpatient psychiatric care and family care (e.g. family meetings). Inpatient care has the potential to be more lucrative as your patients are there on site so you don't need to worry about no-shows (although patients being on passes when you want to see them can be a common-enough occurrence). Right now a regular inpatient unit of time (20 mins =1 unit, 46 mins = 2 units) is around $90 and will be increasing to close to $100 with the billing schedule increases. You also get compensated for placing people on mental health forms ($130 for a form 1 and around $100 for a form 3 from what I call) which can be billed in addition to psychiatric care units. If you did all your charting while the patient is in front of you, kept all follow-ups to 20 mins and did some form renewals along the way you could make like make $330+/hour, but in practically, the reality of making anywhere near this amount is low. Additionally, anything that doesn't involve a patient sitting in front of you (team rounds, etc) is generally not paid.  There are some billing codes for team rounding but I don't think they're very lucrative and I think that a lot of psychiatrists don't bother with them.

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  • 1 year later...

Great info in this thread so far, could anyone comment more on the specifics of income from what they've seen (in the 100's of thousand general range, rather than "does fairly well" etc.)? Are there any jobs or opportunities for inpatient drug rehab type work in Canada, or would that be purely entrepreneurial / private type pay?

What does private practice look like in Canada? Is it simply similar work as outpatient except less wait times and cash for self-determined hourly rates? Is there additional training you need to do to justify your self-determined rates? Is it feasible to have one day a week of private psychotherapy (justifying the time spent with increased rates for presumably more affluent clientele)?

Also what are the differences in income across a few variables - Inpatient/Outpatient time equivalents, Province to province variability, Major metro / smaller city / rural practices, Fellowship to fellowship to general practice billing codes / incomes, and the impact/opportunities in telepsychiatry for distant work (rural work while living in a metro or working in a different province remotely) - does that affect the billing codes you can use? Another thing, is there a formal path to becoming a media consultant / expert correspondent pertaining to mental health in the media/news to combat disinformation?

With covid changing things up and psych already being pretty early on the telemedicine front, how do you see this changing going forward?

 

Thanks for any and all help homies

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On 4/28/2021 at 6:20 PM, TrueBlueTenenbaum said:

Is it simply similar work as outpatient except less wait times and cash for self-determined hourly rates?

I mean you wouldn't be able to bill the province at self-determined rates, that would be an out of pocket charge for your patients. I don't think you could charge much more for out of pocket than what you get in billings anyway, there's an upper ceiling on what people can afford.

On 4/28/2021 at 6:20 PM, TrueBlueTenenbaum said:

Another thing, is there a formal path to becoming a media consultant / expert correspondent pertaining to mental health in the media/news to combat disinformation?

I doubt there's a formal route. How people usually end up in those types of paid gigs is through networking/connections. Maybe you start out by being publicly vocal about psych-related policy issues, or being a chair or figurehead of some kind of organization. Most TV appearances don't pay though. Either way, I don't see that being super lucrative unless you got famous and wrote a book or something. If that's something that interests you maybe you'd want to do an information interview with someone who is doing that already.

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On 4/28/2021 at 6:20 PM, TrueBlueTenenbaum said:

What does private practice look like in Canada?

Oh I realize I misread your question. When people say private practice in reference to psychiatry they tend to mean outpatient but still billing the government, not charging out of pocket. I believe it is against the Canada health act to run any kind of private medical practice for medical care you could bill the government for (this is simplifying a bit, but I believe is basically true).

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