In just 3 years, this B’klyn hosp doc has charged taxpayers for $1M in overtime

New York Post ^ | September 22, 2012

[SMGFan]

This is nuts.

A city shrink at Kings County Hospital, who consistently puts in 80 hours a week or more, has now accumulated more than $1 million in overtime over three years.

Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Law show that staff psychiatrist Dr. Quazi Rahman boosted his $173,503 base salary to $480,856 last year by adding 2,226 hours of OT to the 2,120 hours he was scheduled to work.

That meant Rahman was on duty an average of 83 hours a week for 52 weeks in 2011.

It was basically the same story in 2010, when the 56-year-old child-behavior specialist pulled in $264,497 in overtime to spike his total salary to $438,000.

[SMGFan]

People need help and he must be exhausted? Or was he sleeping on his couch during some of the billed time?

[pepsionice]

If you look around at the Metro bus driver pay records in the DC region...there’s a fair number of drivers who routinely drive seventy hours per week, all year round. None of the safety experts will make a comment over it...but it’s just flirting with danger with one of these guys finally has an accident and kills someone. The Metro folks will have to pay out tens of millions if the driver was regularly on overtime situations.

[SERKIT]

Treating Bush Derangement Syndrome?

[pieceofthepuzzle]

This is what happens when government is involved in medicine. Most of us who do medicine do not charge for ‘overtime’. In fact, the opposite is true, and there is no renumeration for calling patients after hours etc. This guy has some kind of city contract that allows him to essentially rape the public. This is why Obamacare, and any other bureaucracy heavy types of medical systems, will not save money.

Further, I don't know whether this guy is from the US or not originally, but the general idea that bringing in foreign docs is going to reduce costs is just ridiculous.

[traditional1]

"This is what happens when government is involved in medicine"

This is what happens with ALL Government-funded (aka, Taxpayer-funded) Programs, INCLUDING wherever there is UNION Public Employees. There's Overtime Abuse, Sick Time Abuse, OVERSTAFFED abuse, UNDER-PRODUCTION Abuse, etc.

The Taxpayers are to Government what DEEP POCKETS are to Civil Trial Lawyers: UN-LIMITED, UN-ABATED income.

[vette6387]

Our “firefighters” base pay is about $100k. Most of them end up with more that $200k “playing the slck leave game.” You know what they say about these union lay-abouts. “They eat to sleep and then sleep to eat!” See their “cooks” buying the best food in the most expensive market in town.

[heartwood]

Eighty hours a week is pretty normal hours for a doctor to work, but not a psychiatrist.

ER physicians can deal with acute management of psychosis, but maybe there really are enough crazy people coming in that a psychiatrist does have to do 80 hours a week, which I will guarantee you well over half would be paperwork.

It is unusual for a doctor on salary to be paid overtime but that is the taxpayer-funded city contracts for you.

(A military surgeon in Afghanistan doesn’t get any overtime, and 80 hours might be a light week for him.)

[Mister Da]

This sounds reasonable to me. There are a LOT of crazy people in NY. :)