Pros
No night call responsibilities as an outpatient doctor and you get most of your weekends off and have the ability to work remotely. Getting time off isn’t overly difficulty apart from peak times like the holidays and the summers but KP tries to keep everything fair utilizing computer scheduling. Salary and benefits are probably the best in the San Francisco bah area. Contacting specialists is relatively easy by calling them on company provided iPhones. Training is provided if you’re struggling with member patient satisfaction surveys or the EPIC electronic medical record. You can also work part-time or do administrative work to offset the work schedule. At my facility you also have the ability to teach medical students and oversee resident physicians. There are opportunities to switch practice style as well for example between hospitalist work and outpatient clinic. CME lunches will keep you up to date. This was my first job and I will always have fond memories!
Cons
You must be able to type and juggle email messaging from patients, telephone calls from patients, seeing patients in 20 minute blocks of time depending on your speciality. It can be pretty rough if you’re doing primary care as the various quality measures, Medicare coding and patient satisfaction surveys along with all the preventive questions the medical assistants ask make getting through the appointment difficult and that’s not even counting all the various issues the older pr anxious patient can bring up. Referral to specialists can sometimes be a chore because Kaiser expects the primary physician to do the majority of the preparatory work - ever order transplant evaluation labs and other diagnostic tests? If you are not extremely organized and efficient you will likely be taking a lot of work home at night or on the weekends.