Navigating Hospital Obligations

If your hospital sponsored your training, you might be obligated to stay with them for a set period. Use this time wisely. Treat it as a petri dish to intentionally grow your skills and to grow and solidify you network. Build strong relationships with the surgeons you work with, as these connections will be invaluable for your future career moves.

If an opportunity arises before your obligation period ends, you can typically repay the hospital for the remaining portion of your contract. For example, if you have a two-year obligation and leave after one year, you will owe half of the tuition the hospital paid for.

Building Your Network

While fulfilling your hospital obligation, focus on building a robust network of surgeons who enjoy working with you. They may even be addicted to having you on their cases. These relationships can help you in several ways:

• Leverage for Raises: Use your network to increase your ability to negotiation for better pay or work arrangements.

• Letters of Recommendation: These can be incredible if you worked your network correctly. These powerful recommendations will be crucial for securing career-advancing positions elsewhere.

• Freelancing Opportunities: Your network of surgeons who don’t want to do surgeries without you can be an amazing foundation for a highly successful freelancing career.

Exploring Career Options

Here are five career paths you can consider:

1. Stay with Your Current Employer: Negotiate better pay or conditions. Surgeons who appreciate your work can support your requests with the administration.
2. Switch Hospitals: Look for hospitals offering better pay or benefits.
3. Work Directly for a Surgeon: Surgeons can bill for your services, turning you into a revenue generator for their practice. You might negotiate a salary plus a percentage of the revenue you generate. It’s beneficial to use a service specializing in Surgical Assistant billing to ensure accurate compensation. You don’t want to leave your percentage up to the surgeon’s billing department when they aren’t experts at billing for assistants the way they are at billing for surgeons.
4. Join an Assisting Agency: These agencies bill for your services and often offer higher compensation because of it. They may even pay you a portion of their proceeds. You can focus more strongly on your work in surgery rather than a bunch of paperwork, phone calls, and other hassles related to getting paid for your services. The agency does it all.
5. Freelance: Start working on a fee-for-service basis. This can be the most rewarding and lucrative option, as you set your rates per case rather than per hour or salary. Remember the only person that is going to pay you what you are worth in YOU. Hospitals and patient health insurance can reimburse you for assisting services. Hiring an expert medical billing service is highly recommended. This allows you to focus on expanding your client base instead of navigating the complexities and hassles of medical billing.

Starting Your Own Business

If you choose to freelance, the key to maximizing your income is getting paid by the case. While handling billing yourself might seem like a way to save money, it’s often more efficient and profitable to hire an expert. They can ensure you are billed correctly and consistently, freeing up your time to grow your business. Plus many of them work for free until they get you paid. Then they get their percentage. As you can imagine, they are highly incentivized to get you paid as much as possible.

At ACE Surgical Assisting, we offer support in various ways:

• Guidance and Mentorship: We can help you navigate the initial stages of your business, offering advice on best practices, and growth strategies.

• Partnership Opportunities: We can be your partner with the business years of well-honed business acumen, providing the necessary expertise to help your company succeed. From startup to expanding into a large assisting agency, we’d be there to look after and support our mutual business interests.