Sorry long post. I'm a rheumatologist working in a hospital based practice on the east coast. Currently I work 1.0 FTE 8-4pm x 4 days a week and 8-12pm one day with admin time in the afternoon. Lunch 12-1pm each day. The hospital has anticipated financial losses secondary to OBBB. The hospital is combatting this by enforcing providers to work their contracted "patient facing hours." I recently requested to go part time to 0.8 FTE by taking one day off in the week and the rest of my schedule remaining as is.
My boss and the administrators are saying that my current schedule is actually not reflective of 1.0 FTE because I am working 32 patient facing hours (7 hours x 4 days, 4 hours x 1 day) and not 36 patient facing hours. Admin time not counted in patient facing hours. If I take a day off in my current schedule, i will actually be working 25 patient facing hours which puts me at 0.7FTE. So they are asking me to add 4 additional patient facing hours in my schedule to get me to 0.8FTE. So essentially I will have to extend my work day on the days I'm working and I will be taking a 20% deduction in my salary, bonus, days off, etc. Right now I'm seeing 20 patients daily so now I have to see even more than that and get paid significantly less?? This seems unfair. They said that even if I remain full-time, this would eventually be implemented however since I requested a schedule change, I'm under scrutiny now.
At the end of the day, isn't production what matters? If I am meeting my RVU target in the current schedule, why this? Admin said it's about "increased patient care access." I even requested that they reduce my schedule but keep my RVU threshold higher and I will continue to meet production so my salary doesn't get cut so much. They refused. If they do this to me, I will be seeing significantly more than 20 patients daily and being paid way less. Any and all advice is appreciated on how to approach this situation and negotiate. TIA