Family Medicine Salary

[pbarry]

On 4/1/2021 at 4:32 PM, shikimate said:

250K with 30% overhead in Vancouver seems pretty paltry. There are salaried positions at hospital paying 250K working 9-5 not to mention health insurance and other perks. 

Like if you are paying 75K/yr to clinic there's no way it cost them that much in overhead, they are just making a killing off you. In that case I'd consider getting together with a group of 2-3 people and rent your own space (2000-2500/month), hire your own receptionist (3000/month), maybe add miscellaneous costs like utility, EMR etc (2000/month), then your monthly cost is at most 75K, and that's shared between like 3 people. Of course there's some upfront work and gotta buy some equipment but once it's set up you don't have to worry about it for a while.

I'm not sure if you are speaking from experience, but it doesnt sound like you are.   I'm not sure if you are suggesting that overhead will be 75K /yr split between 3 docs i.e. $25K/yr overhead per doc.  That is not realistic.  Even with a "shoe-string" budget office, most GPs will be looking at minimum 20% overhead i.e. if you bill 250K, 50K/yr in overhead. etc. 

And you have to consider that you will be doing a LOT more work. You will need to write your own referrals, do your own billing, manage turnover, manage rent negotiations when your lease ends, manage EMR maintenance, etc etc. 

I work at a large GP clinic, and we have hired referral coordinators, billing specialist, LPNs, RNs, an office manager etc. Yes, we pay closer to 25-30% overhead, but it makes my daily life so much easier, in that I can see patients quicker (I'm not spending 10mins doing a dressing change, or an ear flush, bc I have an LPN to do that). 

Overall, it makes for a much better work-life balance, and I can actually bill more by delegating tasks to employees.  So, I'm billing closer to 400K/yr, rather than 250-300K if I had to spend time doing all that other work and managing the business instead of focusing on seeing patients.

[JohnGrisham]

On 4/1/2021 at 4:32 PM, shikimate said:

250K with 30% overhead in Vancouver seems pretty paltry. There are salaried positions at hospital paying 250K working 9-5 not to mention health insurance and other perks. 

Like if you are paying 75K/yr to clinic there's no way it cost them that much in overhead, they are just making a killing off you. In that case I'd consider getting together with a group of 2-3 people and rent your own space (2000-2500/month), hire your own receptionist (3000/month), maybe add miscellaneous costs like utility, EMR etc (2000/month), then your monthly cost is at most 75K, and that's shared between like 3 people. Of course there's some upfront work and gotta buy some equipment but once it's set up you don't have to worry about it for a while.

Rent will most definitely not only be 2000-2500 a month for a clinic that can accomodate 2-3 physicians haha. And generally, you're probably going to want more than 1 MOA/receptionist if you have 3 busy/high billing physicians. Usually 1:1 ratio for efficiency once you get to the point of billing alot. There is a lot of phone work and liasing with patients/specialists/imaging/requests.

Overhead yes is often making someone else money, but it seems like most are okay with that sacrafice on 30% overhead for the lack of headache. 

I'm not disagreeing overall, opening up a shared clinic can definitely save money, which is why you see lots of clinics opening up trying to recruit locums/new grads to come work and pay 30% overhead to them. But theres a lot of variability to it, and some just dont want the extra work / management. 

[JohnGrisham]

3 hours ago, pbarry said:

I'm not sure if you are speaking from experience, but it doesnt sound like you are.   I'm not sure if you are suggesting that overhead will be 75K /yr split between 3 docs i.e. $25K/yr overhead per doc.  That is not realistic.  Even with a "shoe-string" budget office, most GPs will be looking at minimum 20% overhead i.e. if you bill 250K, 50K/yr in overhead. etc. 

And you have to consider that you will be doing a LOT more work. You will need to write your own referrals, do your own billing, manage turnover, manage rent negotiations when your lease ends, manage EMR maintenance, etc etc. 

I work at a large GP clinic, and we have hired referral coordinators, billing specialist, LPNs, RNs, an office manager etc. Yes, we pay closer to 25-30% overhead, but it makes my daily life so much easier, in that I can see patients quicker (I'm not spending 10mins doing a dressing change, or an ear flush, bc I have an LPN to do that). 

Overall, it makes for a much better work-life balance, and I can actually bill more by delegating tasks to employees.  So, I'm billing closer to 400K/yr, rather than 250-300K if I had to spend time doing all that other work and managing the business instead of focusing on seeing patients.

Agree that this is more in keeping with what i've experience in a big centre.

 

[shikimate]

Appreciate the input and data from the above posters. 

[Dian Cecht]

What's the salary like in Alberta now on average?

 

Edit: I should have expanded on this; my apologies.

 

Because of the current government's cutbacks and the perception of family medicine becoming financially intolerable, would a recent FM doc like to give their thoughts?