On weekends, there’s always other stuff. Payroll for the coming weeks, office bills, and credit card statements I didn’t get to during the week, CME, forms, licensing paperwork, etc.
I’d guess about 15 hours/week goes into nonpatient-related stuff. Each year that’s more than 700 hours (or a little over a month) of extra time. Tack that on to the roughly 60 hours that I spend seeing patients between the office and hospital.
People say we make “a lot” (whatever that is), but they don’t see everything behind it. The 7-12 years of post-college training. The student loans of $200,000 and dating back to when I was 26 years old. The rising costs of overhead and dropping rates of reimbursement. The denied payments in disputes over claims. And, as mentioned above, the huge amount of time this job takes for stuff beyond just seeing patients.
We don’t get paid by the hour, but if we did, the rate would probably be a lot lower than what most would expect.