Goddamn it.

An inner city psychiatrist sees 20-40 people a day. 15 minute med checks, which in a city is 5 or 10 minutes. "Any major symptoms? Suicidality? Side effects? Here's your refill." You try and pull that off in a suburban area and the Feds will be shooting your dog to access your backdoor.

I knew that guy. Compass Mental Health. There, and he was also the one lone psychiatrist at the rural clinic in Gray's Harbor County. He also did some private practice for the rich kidz. Rich kids? 90 minutes. Downtown Seattle? 10 minutes each. Gray's Harbor? 5-7 minutes, once a week. In '97.

And there's plenty of money to be made for the entrepreneurial. If you want to be rich in inner city psychiatry (and you don't have to be a doc), you open a clinic and hire 1 psychiatrist and lots of (talk) therapists, usually social workers. Medicaid will pay for 1 therapy visit per week (around $60/hr) and a 15 minute med check with the doc ($40/visit). The doc usually gets salaried but proportionally takes 50% of that. Let him have it all. The therapist, however, gets very little-- $20/hr.

Goddamn it. Yep. Social workers were making $17 an hour. And he was making enough to justify driving eight hours round trip every week for one day a week. Doing state work.

Fuck you. Badged.