Northstar jobs might differ from place to place, but I am a current employee of NorthStar and thus far I am pretty happy. I've been on SDN long enough for some people to know that I am not a troll or even a real optimist. I call myself a realist and sometimes reality sucks. Anyway, my current job with Northstar was the best offer that I heard of from my co-residents and co-fellows in my state. I am in the Midwest, I work 50 to 55hrs/week. When I am rounding in the ICU I sometimes have worked as high as 65hrs in a week but that was only once and usually average 55 to 60hrs a week.
My salary is $440K, $20K of that is a metrics bonus, so even without it my guaranteed income is $420K. I do 4, 24hr calls a month one of them is a weekend i.e. Saturday or Sunday, but then one of them is a Thursday so I have a 3 day weekend too. I get 9 weeks of vacation, $3,500/yr for CME, $900/yr for cell phone, and they contribute $9,000/yr to my 401K. DEA, Medical license, and Malpractice Insurance including Tail Coverage is paid for. During the months that I round 1 week in the ICU I have 1 less general call that month and no other weekend call. Our calls are 24hrs if we stay past 7am on post call day we get paid $187/hr, if we do more than 4 calls a month we get paid $1,500 per weekday call with post call day off or $3,000 for weekend call, which I’ve done and gotten paid a few times for.
I supervise both CRNA’s and Residents, I do everything except hearts and most of my calls are OB. Other places I interviewed wanted me to mainly do thoracic or vascular because of my Critical Care training and wouldn’t let me do OB or Regional. Since I was fresh out of residency/fellowship I wanted to be able to do everything to keep the skills sharp and this place lets me do that. So far they have delivered on everything they promised, the only thing that’s lagging behind is our metrics bonus which we’re one quarter behind on but thus far has been paid out to us in full.
Does this sound like a bad gig to you guys? Sure I’ll never make $600K or whatever partners were making 5 years ago but 90% of new grads won’t make that either. Every where else I interviewed started me off at $300K or less and I would eventually over 3 years get to $400K. My friend works in Orlando for an AMC as well he didn’t do a fellowship, makes $410K and has 11weeks vacation working roughly the same hours as me. That doesn’t sound half bad as well.
I am not saying I wouldn’t rather work for a private group or hell even do my own cases but for family reasons I need to be in this region. And private groups are fading fast. Like everyone on here says pretty soon the three options for us will be Hospital Employee, AMC Employee or Academics.