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Know Your Worth


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Based off of updates from threads I follow on this forum, I have seen little-to-no change in salary offers that people are posting over the last few years. This is in no way meant to be anything other than informative and discussion producing, so please try and not attack.

I just finished my first year at a primary care practice in Florida (one of the notoriously low paying PA states)

I made $140,000

Next year I will make $180,000

I work my butt off while at the office, but I only work 8-5 with an hour of work at home M-F. No call. No nights.  No weekends.  Excellent benefits.  

 

I implore new graduates and even seasoned PA's. Know. Your. Worth. There is nothing special or unique about my employer. If they can afford to pay me this much and still reap a huge profit from my work, just imagine what employers at specialty practices are gaining from our labors. We are licensed medical providers that bring in 85-100% the value of a physician based on the patient's insurance, yet I am seeing salary offers that are hardly better than RN's and have not changed much in the last 5 years. Know. Your. Worth. 

 

 

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All due respect---"know your worth" is great motivational talk but increasingly salaries are non-negotiable. For example if you work for a union, a university, or a major hospital system there is usually a tiered salary structure that is not negotiable, at all. 

The other problem with that is that why would any private employer pay YOU 140k when they can pay the next person in line 90k??

Might be more helpful if you told us how you got that rate.

 

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34 minutes ago, BruceBanner said:

All due respect---"know your worth" is great motivational talk but increasingly salaries are non-negotiable. For example if you work for a union, a university, or a major hospital system there is usually a tiered salary structure that is not negotiable, at all.

The thing is, PAs are revenue creation, not overhead.  If a PA can bring in 3x his or her salary, why should that PA settle for 1/10th of  collections?  Show me a union worker who's NOT overhead?  Nothing against them, but there's a reason salescritters and creative professionals are generally not unionized: individual initiative and skill makes a HUGE difference in their benefit to the employer.

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I agree with you, it's just not the market norm, BECAUSE we are revenue-generators. By paying us a nominal static market rate, the rest of our production goes to profit.

I was represented by a major union with Kaiser and while our salaries/raises were very fair, they were set in stone. We were absolutely generating revenue for the corporation and I'd venture to say still profitable despite the overhead of union-mandated benefits.

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I see 16-24 patients a day. I make this type of money because my company pays rVU based which allows for a very clear distinction between seeing xPatients * yComplexity = % of revenue for me and % for the company. 

 

I find it tremendously fair and would be a great negotiation point when discussing with employers. Who wouldn’t want an employee to be motivated to see more patients and work harder and bill correctly for the services they provide. 

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Just my simpleminded observation for the OP...

Working 8a-5p is 9 hours spent at the office, plus one hour of work at home each night = 10 hours.  That’s 50 hours a week x 52 weeks, for 2600 hours/yr.  $140k/2600= $53.85/hr.

Not exactly knocking it out of the park.  Anyone can work more hours, and bring in more clams.

My father in law said it best, many years ago:  

You are trading time for money.  The goal is to trade the least amount of time for the largest amount of money.  

Cutting the apple into smaller pieces doesn’t give you more apple.

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2 hours ago, ral said:

Just my simpleminded observation for the OP...

Working 8a-5p is 9 hours spent at the office, plus one hour of work at home each night = 10 hours.  That’s 50 hours a week x 52 weeks, for 2600 hours/yr.  $140k/2600= $53.85/hr.

Not exactly knocking it out of the park.  Anyone can work more hours, and bring in more clams.

My father in law said it best, many years ago:  

You are trading time for money.  The goal is to trade the least amount of time for the largest amount of money.  

Cutting the apple into smaller pieces doesn’t give you more apple.

Your numbers are correct but are there benefits? OP said "great benefits". Good benefits are worth about an additional 35% which gets OP to 73.32.  Even a very conservative 20% gets OP to $67. Again not a fortune but not chump change either. Then there is the work atmosphere and relationship with the physician. That is a force multiplier that is hard to calculate.

I often counsel folks to look at the money but not just the money.

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Based off of updates from threads I follow on this forum, I have seen little-to-no change in salary offers that people are posting over the last few years. This is in no way meant to be anything other than informative and discussion producing, so please try and not attack.

I just finished my first year at a primary care practice in Florida (one of the notoriously low paying PA states)

I made $140,000

Next year I will make $180,000

I work my butt off while at the office, but I only work 8-5 with an hour of work at home M-F. No call. No nights.  No weekends.  Excellent benefits.  

 

I implore new graduates and even seasoned PA's. Know. Your. Worth. There is nothing special or unique about my employer. If they can afford to pay me this much and still reap a huge profit from my work, just imagine what employers at specialty practices are gaining from our labors. We are licensed medical providers that bring in 85-100% the value of a physician based on the patient's insurance, yet I am seeing salary offers that are hardly better than RN's and have not changed much in the last 5 years. Know. Your. Worth. 

 

 

Canadian or American Dollars? J/k good for you! That's great.

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

 

 

 

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6 hours ago, BruceBanner said:

All due respect---"know your worth" is great motivational talk but increasingly salaries are non-negotiable. For example if you work for a union, a university, or a major hospital system there is usually a tiered salary structure that is not negotiable, at all. 

The other problem with that is that why would any private employer pay YOU 140k when they can pay the next person in line 90k??

Might be more helpful if you told us how you got that rate.

 

Agreed. Also in Florida. Every single offer I’ve ever had has been non-negotiable. Employers will show you the door if you ask for above 85k as a new grad. The highest paid classmate of mine is making 95k. 

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3 hours ago, ral said:

Just my simpleminded observation for the OP...

Working 8a-5p is 9 hours spent at the office, plus one hour of work at home each night = 10 hours.  That’s 50 hours a week x 52 weeks, for 2600 hours/yr.  $140k/2600= $53.85/hr.

Not exactly knocking it out of the park.  Anyone can work more hours, and bring in more clams.

My father in law said it best, many years ago:  

You are trading time for money.  The goal is to trade the least amount of time for the largest amount of money.  

Cutting the apple into smaller pieces doesn’t give you more apple.

I provided my absolute max hours so that is the WORST schedule I will ever have. 

Typical 9-430 without any hours at home. 

 

And like the other poster said. Very, very good benefits. 

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49 minutes ago, rev ronin said:

This is on ARC-PA for approving too many programs in specific geographic areas.  Not only do the rotations suck, the presence of lots of programs drives down wages.

Florida is absolutely saturated and it’s difficult to acquire sites. The overwhelming majority of my rotations absolutely sucked. Despite being an extremely strong student academically, I feel wholly unprepared to practice without some serious training and guidance from an SP. All my classmates feel the same, and many are stuck in abusive practices out of desperation. 

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1 hour ago, PAFL12 said:

Florida is absolutely saturated and it’s difficult to acquire sites. The overwhelming majority of my rotations absolutely sucked. Despite being an extremely strong student academically, I feel wholly unprepared to practice without some serious training and guidance from an SP. All my classmates feel the same, and many are stuck in abusive practices out of desperation. 

Wow, that sucks and I'm really sorry to hear it.  My one bad rotation experience was that I was expected to know TOO MUCH hospitalist medicine and take on too much responsibilities--Really, I could have done a TON worse.

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5 hours ago, PAFL12 said:

Agreed. Also in Florida. Every single offer I’ve ever had has been non-negotiable. Employers will show you the door if you ask for above 85k as a new grad. The highest paid classmate of mine is making 95k. 

If NO ONE takes these crap offers after a while they go up.  Supply and demand.   

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10 hours ago, canada202 said:

I see 16-24 patients a day. I make this type of money because my company pays rVU based which allows for a very clear distinction between seeing xPatients * yComplexity = % of revenue for me and % for the company. 

 

I find it tremendously fair and would be a great negotiation point when discussing with employers. Who wouldn’t want an employee to be motivated to see more patients and work harder and bill correctly for the services they provide. 

Answer: The VA

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9 hours ago, rev ronin said:

This is on ARC-PA for approving too many programs in specific geographic areas.  Not only do the rotations suck, the presence of lots of programs drives down wages.

Unfortunately, the ARC-PA cannot deny a program accreditation if they meet the requirements. This is a legal issue and can't just throw their hands up and say "we got enough." What they could, and should, do is place faculty (adjunct does not count) to student ratios, minimum hospital rotation sites per student, ect, in their accreditation requirements.

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10 hours ago, ventana said:

If NO ONE takes these crap offers after a while they go up.  Supply and demand.   

Well, unfortunately most people do take these crap offers, because Florida has something like 11 PA schools, in addition to all the online schools churning out NPs. The market is flooded, and people are desperate. 

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11 hours ago, rev ronin said:

Wow, that sucks and I'm really sorry to hear it.  My one bad rotation experience was that I was expected to know TOO MUCH hospitalist medicine and take on too much responsibilities--Really, I could have done a TON worse.

It really is a shame, because I put in the work and ultimately was rewarded with a heaping pile of adversity entering the market I’m in. I cannot relocate. I’m continuously passed over by prospective employers due to lack of experience, who also question why I’ve been looking for work for nearly 6 months now. I don’t care to explain to them that I gave up my initial job because it was abusive, and the other offers I’ve had consisted of “65k, no benefits”. Employers have NO idea what it’s like. 

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1 hour ago, PAFL12 said:

Employers have NO idea what it’s like. 

They do, they just, for the most part, don't care.  It's one part of the adversarial nature of employment, and the lack of distinctive of medical profession: work for wages, produce work product, transactional to the core.  But that's a different rant...

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11 hours ago, rev ronin said:

They do, they just, for the most part, don't care. 

Yep.  They know EXACTLY what it's like.  That's how they get away with offering $65k and no benefits.  Because they know someone will take it.

Knowing your worth is great.  More important is knowing your worth in your location and specialty.  Congrats, OP, for pulling in that kind of money.  Unfortunately it's not realistic everywhere or in every specialty/field.  

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It seems that over the years I’ve read many posts like this one, and have met PAs in family practice that have a wide range of pay. My initial conclusion is that practice owners just make a lot of money off of PAs and some are more or less willing to share the profits. Although when I read the PA owned practice section it seems like a lot of them do not make great money, and a lot of them wouldn’t be willing to do it again if they had the choice. I’m wondering what everyone’s opinion on this is. 

 

As a young PA and my wife graduating NP school next year, do you think we could make more money owning our own family practice clinic compared to working for the large hospital systems in my area? Also what do you think would be a good secondary masters degree that would aid in opening your own practice? 

 

Sorry for high jacking this post.

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Supply and demand. When I graduated in 2012 there was something like 12 PA programs in Pennsylvania. A lot of my classmates who were local were getting terrible low offers---65k, etc. Now in Michigan we're seeing the same thing--7 or so programs for a relatively small catchment area of work, static salaries of 85-95k. 

You're somewhat protected as a tenured PA, but even still saturation drives market rates down. Employers get it, and they do not GAF. They have a stack of 50 CVs on their desk they can pull from.

I harp on this all the time here and probably sound like an old man, but PAs are revenue-generators for employers, and by paying us more they lose their profit margin. Say you had an FM/UC practice. You would logically want to staff it with a couple of a docs (part time or contractors preferably), and maybe 6-8 PAs/NPs who do the brunt of the labor at a fixed market rate.

I'm all about upward mobility for PAs but we cant outrun economics. The best pay will always be in demand areas. 

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