Pros
1099 independent contractor means vacation days whenever you want. Rental car and hotels paid for. (choose one hotel brand & earn elite/reward status quickly). No nights, no holidays, no pager, no call. Weekends only if you want. When taking frequent vacations I was able to earn $123,000/yr pre-tax.
Easy work. You're basically just doing H&Ps on an iPad to re-verify the Dx's annually so the big insurers can collect $$ from Medicare for each Dx / DRG.
for the most part, patients are cheerful & friendly, you get to meet dogs & cats all day if you're an animal lover.
explore your state! Visit new towns! Visit every single neighborhood you never even knew existed! Spend lots of time alone, outdoors, enjoying the weather, never stagnant, new scenery.
Cons
Constant driving, often to cities that are hours away from home. You don't get paid for this travel time. Was deployed to a zone 9hrs from home, drive was unpaid. For months I was assigned to a city 5hrs away. Would spend the workweek there, drive home for weekends.
You get a front-row seat to Social Determinants of Health. Get ready to smell like cigarettes after spending all day in the homes of heavy smokers. Indeed several patients smoked cigarettes DURING their visits with me! Truly eye-opening living situations. Pts living in squalor/filth/hoarding/bugs/vermin/feces. You will visit every trailer park in the city, multiple times. Pts often proudly displayed symbols of bigotry like confederate flags at their home (in Michigan!!), and many times I feared for colleagues doing this work as women, or people of color. Every single day I *felt* the layer of safety my white male privilege afforded me, as I walked onto people's properties. Only once was I chased by dogs.
No support from the company. 1099 indep contractor has downsides too - no healthcare, no benefits, no 401k, no nothing. Zilch. The biggest moment of clarity with this company was when I pointedly asked what the criteria were to earn a raise, and was told that in the last decade of operations, zero raises have been given to any providers anywhere. You'll make $100 per visit, forever, and it will never go up. No matter how deeply you care, no matter how thoroughly you go into the Pt's history, etc.
For a period of time Signify had us contracted with United, which was a whole separate can of worms. Different computer, more stringent requirements, additional labs, doing fingerstick a1c's on every patient, urine dips too. Suddenly I was expected to travel around with an encyclopedic array of Pt Education forms to hand out. WAY more work, every visit. Same pay.
Lots of pressure to "upcode" for greater severity scores: don't just settle for the Dx of diabetes, use this little pulse-ox style gizmo to see if they've got diabetes WITH peripheral vascular disease!! (this means United/Aetna/BCBS/etc gets more $$$ from Medicare when you sign your Dr name... but you? You get paid the same).
