FP Contract

[PAC1234]

Hey guys, thanks in advance for your input. 

I am renegotiating my contract at a FP location in WV. I have been here 3 years. Was hired in 2016 with a 3 year contract. I was hired as a new grad and started at a base salary of $80,000 with $1000 pay raise yearly for 3 years. I have a bonus structure of 25% bonus of receipts over 28,000 monthly.

Benefits: 401K match, paid health insurance, disability, malpractice, $1500 CME, 25 days PTO as well as major holidays off. I do take call via phone 1 out of every 6 weeks but it is built into my salary. 

New contract offer is for 5% raise yearly for the next 3 years: so starting in June my salary would be $86,100, then 90,405, then 3rd year 94,925. Would keep same benefits and bonus structure. 

I know the salary is a little low for the average but since my office pays my husband and I's health insurance (around $12,000/yr) I feel like I can't press much more. 

Just wanted to see what others thought before we have an actual sit down meeting about it. 

[MediMike]

Regardless of insurance your salary is pretty low, especially accounting for 1:6 call, even recognizing a possibly lower COL than average(?). Not working FP I have no clue how much you end up collecting via your bonus structure.

A guaranteed 5% a year is pretty nice, just unfortunate that you're starting so low. Now, if this is offbalanced by a pretty significant quarterly bonus then I may be way off track.

Insurance for you should be standard. 

[PAC1234]

MediMike, thanks for the input. I am unsure how to approach asking for more, as my OM is fighting for the 5% already as the Docs want to only do 4% currently. When I started I was hitting pretty good bonuses (around 1,000-1,200 a month) but then we added a new Dr last spring and his schedule has taken priority for the past year to build his practice, so the other PA and I have not hit our bonus in a year,  and as well our receipts are down over the past year . Per the OM, they are done building his schedule and she anticipates we will start getting bonuses again but I am not holding my breath because our schedules are slow as an office through the summer months. 

I really like my office, the lifestyle is great, and I dearly love all of my colleagues which I know is a real lucky gig so leaving really isn't something I want to do. If I have to leave, we have an easy 30 day notification clause in our contracts so it's not hard. 

[MediMike]

It's a tough spot to be in. If you are happy and feel appreciated, love your colleagues and have a good working environment well...there always has to be a trade off right?

I think the only tactic you could use would be the lose of $12k in bonus income over the prior year. I'm assuming your low annual salary was taking into account the anticipated bonus $$$ to balance it out. 

Asking for a straight bump to $90-$92k would be a good start with the annual raises. As I said, without knowing your COL it's hard, but a colleague of mine is making $140k working FP for Kaiser right now 3 years out of school in a low COL region of the PNW. Definitely an outlier but so is <$90k/yr 3yrs out. They are making money off of you for sure.