AAHPM Spring Quarterly : Page 15SPRING 2012 15 AAHPM’s Compensation Survey Offers Career Exploration Tool Certainly, one component of job satisfaction in any field is compensation. For physicians who are actively exploring career options, AAHPM’s recent Physician Compensation and Benefits Survey 2 provides the most comprehensive data on salary and benefits, time commitments, and other facets of hospice and palliative medicine work, including regional variations. It compiles data from nearly 800 phy-sicians who responded to the November 2010 survey. These data are extremely helpful when making an argu-ment for matching market salary data in the field, says Greg Sachs, MD, professor of medicine and geriatrics and chief of the division of general internal medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, IN. “The compensation survey provided data we were des-perately seeking, as both the school of medicine and our physician groups are using external benchmarks quite explicitly in determining physician compensation. Other surveys to which our administration routinely turns sim-ply do not have adequate numbers of respondents in palliative care to give one any confidence about their figures. Having the AAHPM ‘stamp of approval’ provides additional credibility.” Likewise, the data can help program directors determine appropriate title and salary information based on aver-ages in the field, says Tim Cousounis, a consultant with the DAI Palliative Care Group in greater Philadelphia, PA. “The survey can be helpful for users considering profes-sional changes, because it gives some idea of job titles— the sorts of positions that are out there.” Cousounis, who has helped place physicians in hospice and palliative medicine positions and consulted with agencies on strategic planning for physician staffing needs, finds a high sense of professional satisfaction among this group of doctors. “What keeps it from being an enormously desirable job are factors such as workload and schedule, sometimes ill-conceived positions, and a lag between the need for additional positions based on program growth and bringing new physicians on board. On the hospice side, there can be some role drift, since agencies aren’t always adept at utilizing physician resources or even understanding what the role entails,” he says. “This field is still young and still attracting the best and brightest because of its extraordinary professional rewards. But for the field to continue to grow, these issues need to be addressed,” Cousounis says. The degree of control or autonomy over a position often is a key factor in job satisfaction, while on-call responsi-bilities, which can be a heavy burden, are a major dis-satisfier. “I also wonder if the fact that compensation is generally lower than for other medical specialties outside of geriatrics may be a dissatisfier. But physicians who go into this specialty are drawn by other factors. They know full well what the compensation is like, and they aren’t driven professionally by compensation.” Stephen Bekanich, MD, medical director of palliative care services at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, offers himself as a real-life example of using AAHPM’s compensation survey data to help plan his next career step. He loves his job, but moving from Utah to Florida 2 years ago was quite a culture shock. “Things have gone remarkably well for me here. If anything, I feel overly appreciated at work.” Dr. Bekanich believes HPM physicians’ compensation, generally, is at a reasonable level, “especially given that the bean counters don’t always see our value proposi-tion the same way we do.” He finds it in the ballpark relative to sources like the Medical Group Management Association’s Physician Compensation Survey . 3 “I’ve had a tremendous opportunity here in Miami to build pallia-tive care from the ground up, with protected time for research, teaching, and program building. That, to me, is more important than a salary dollar amount,” he says. “I think a lot of people who go into palliative care have a personality type where they want to be innovators. It’s still a fledgling specialty, not firmly established in the way, for example, cardiology is. But to see the changes we achieve as time goes on—it’s incredibly exhilarating.” References 1. Casarett DJ, Spence C, Haskins M, Teno J. One big happy family? Interdisciplinary variation in job satisfaction among hospice providers. J Palliat Med. 2011;14(8):913-917. 2. American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Physician Compensation and Benefits Survey—2010 Report. Glenview, IL: American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine; 2011. 3. Medical Group Management Association. Physician compensation. Available at: www.mgma.com/physcomp. Accessed February 10, 2012. Larry Beresford is a freelance medical writer specializing in hospice and palliative care. He lives in Oakland, CA. Contact him at larryberesford@ hotmail.com. VOL. 13 Publication List Using a screen reader? Click Here |
