Janet -
Re maternity leave: There is a period of disability for maternity leaves. Usually 6-8 weeks. This period should be treated the same as your other disability coverage. We have a contractual benefit for our rads for disability in our employment agreements for the period before the insurance policy kicks in at 90 days.
We allow rads to apply vacation but do not require that they do for the parental bonding (family leave) portion. If they don't apply their vacation, and most don't, its taken without pay. It does impact their shareholder distributions insofar as no paid compensation taken.
There is a Washington State Paid Family leave. Its relatively recent, but radiologists have used this to help subsidize the last couple of years. Its no where near what a rad earns weekly. You might see if your state has something similar and plan around it. WA state allows one year of intermittent family leave. We've seen new dads take advantage of this when in the prior 3 decades they didn't even consider asking for parental leave time.
The ACR did a workforce survey on this topic in 2019. See attached.
Also the RBMA did a hot topic on this issue in 2019 and it can be found on the RBMA webpage, when logged in, under Surveys and Data. (There may be an issue with the link. Didn't work recently for a couple of us, but Jessica Struve chasing. )
Hope you get other feedback.
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Beth Williams MHA, FACMPE, FRBMA
Executive Director
Vantage Radiology and Diagnostic Services
Federal Way WA
(253) 661-1700 ext. 1105
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-10-2022 11:15
From: Janet Hoffman
Subject: Paid FMLA Question
My group is in the process of reviewing/updating its pay policy regarding FMLA for radiologists with a special focus on maternity and paternity leave.
I am curious how other groups are handling compensation during FMLA absences. Is the requirement to use vacation days (which are paid days) vs unpaid leave the same requirement for Shareholders and non-Shareholder? Is there a different policy for maternity vs paternity vs general medical leave of absence?
My group just instituted a policy (approved by our labor attorney) for both Shareholders and employed physicians that requires 50% of the FMLA time come from vacation days (so paid days) and the remaining 50% is paid by the group at a slightly reduced rate and does not impact vacation time. We are considering a different policy for maternity and paternity leave to be discussed at our next meeting. I suspect it will be a long discussion.
I appreciate any feedback on the issue.
Janet
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Janet Hoffman
Practice Director - RAML
Janet E. Hoffman, LLC
Vienna VA
571-295-4550
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