Contract Negotiation Time

[PAS2014]

Hello fellow PAs in Psychiatry!

I am working in my 3rd year as a PA (1st year in forensic psychiatry, then 6 months in hospital medicine, then 1 year now in general psychiatry).  I currently love my job and the practice I work for, so I have no interest in leaving.  I am negotiating my 2nd year contract w/ my current psychiatry practice.  My contract is pretty good, considering I am only one of 6 psychiatric PAs in my state and the laws and acceptance for psych PAs is, frankly, crap in this state.  They have been really working with me despite many insurance companies refusing to credential me as a psych PA, etc.  Thus, here are my stats currently:

$90K base salary

50% bonus of all money collected over $135K yearly.  (Billed $275,000 this year after a 4 month training period.  I do have access to my billing/collections.  Billing dept collected 25% of my billings this year, thus no bonus this year).  As an aside, they just fired our internal billing dept and hired an external one, so I hope these abysmal collections change soon...

Medical/dental paid by employer.

6 weeks PTO.

I am eligible to contribute a max of 11% of my salary starting this year to 401k.  They contribute max of 5% total earnings.

$750 CME money.  All credentialing fees, certifications, association dues covered by employer above this amount.

Duties:  1/2 of my day on the C/L service at a huge inner city hospital, so far doing all follow-ups for two physicians (approx 5-15 patients a day).  The other 1/2 of my day is scheduled in outpatient clinic and NH rounding (approx 10 patients per day).  I feel I have a good mix of duties, total 15-25 patients daily depending on the day.

I feel I have a pretty fair shake, given the circumstances, which are these:  this is a NP heavy city and psych PAs cannot be credentialed by the three biggest insurers in the city without a Psych CAQ.  I am eligible to take this in April, and plan to sit for it then.  Once this is completed, I should have quite an increase in my outpatient production numbers.  C/L numbers won’t change much (as most are Medicare and Medicaid or self-pay/uninsured).  

Long message, but please let me know if there is anything you would change for next year’s contract, or contact me w/ questions.  Thanks!