The Workplace Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I work in the medical field, focusing in the pharmaceutical department, getting scheduled drugs authorized.
Due to the "opioid Epidemic" there is a major increase in the work load for Narcotic authorizations. The new laws have turned something that used to be 15 minutes per patient to 1-2 hours per patient and includes a whole new job descriptions.
Do we have the right to ask for more money due to the nationwide epidemic resulting in increased duties at work?
Do we have the right to ask for more money due to the nationwide epidemic resulting in increased duties at work?
In your contract should be specified how many hours you should be working every day. If these new laws require you to work more hours than before then I think your contract should be updated, along with a possible renegotiation of your salary.
Either that, or just adapt these longer processes to your working hours, in case your contract will not be renewed. That most probably means that you will be attending less patients than you did before, when it took 15 min per each. This, as you commented, seems to be something not quite possible to do, as your field handles critical situations.
In the bigger picture, this is your manager's problem. It seems to be clear that he is going to be needing more workforce (to compensate for the longer times per patient) or compensate you for your extra time and work.
Assuming you are not in a union contract, you can always ask for more pay or an adjustment in schedule. Since you are salaried you may have less room to move on the schedule issue.
If you are going to ask for more money, you need to be able to demonstrate how you are providing more value. If you have to do more work to process a patient and therefore can process fewer patients in the same amount of time, I'm not sure your value has changed. The nature of your contribution has changed but not in a way which provide more value.
Having to process more paperwork and phone calls are contributing to why it takes longer, but I'm not sure that makes the net of your work any more valuable and that is what you need if you are going to ask for more money
It depends.
You are assalaried, it means you work to someone and you are paid to work a moreless fixed number of hours/day but this someone is probably paid in a per patient basis. That means your company is in trouble, they will need to hire a lot of people and try to re negotiate contracts to keep the business afloat.
That being said it's better you first try to talk with people in the industry to see how that is affecting jobs and companies survivability. You knows get the whole picture.
Now to address your immediate question you must answer this:
1) Are You working more hours/day?
2) Is somewhat you work getting harder in the sense its getting more of your "juice"?
3) Your responsabilities increased? Example: If you do something wrong that means DEA officers will storm your place? Will your company get issued?
4) There some sort of bonus paid per patient/day? Example you get a few bucks more if you process 200+ patients/week.
Increases in: Workload, Work hours, Responsabilities and Stress are all valid points to ask for a raise.
Also note this situation can be temporary or maybe someone will make a software automatizes a good portion of that paperwork and increases back your productivity. In that case can you lower back your salary?
