For Cherry Hospital psychiatrists, 230K plus extended duty pay and time off for moonlighting

GOLDSBORO -- Since 2012, psychiatrists at Cherry Hospital have collected at least $2 million in extra pay for working nights and weekends – while some take leave during the day to work a second job.

Instead of scheduling doctors to work shifts around the clock as part of their normal duties, Cherry administrators staff nights and weekends with psychiatrists who volunteer to work for extra money. More than $400,000 of that “extended duty” pay went to the managing psychiatrists who made the schedule and also volunteered to work for extra pay, state records show.

Cherry’s costly staffing and scheduling differs from the state’s other psychiatric hospitals in Morganton and Butner. Several psychiatrists at Broughton regularly work nights as part of their job; that hospital has spent roughly 40 percent of what Cherry has in extra pay. At Central Regional, the hospital pays residents from nearby universities to handle nights and weekends.

For at least a year, Cherry Hospital has served fewer mentally ill patients than it can hold. Since a new facility opened in September, administrators have said they will not open its 100 additional beds until they hire more psychiatrists. Patients across Eastern North Carolina in need of those slots are waiting days – sometimes more than a week – in emergency departments poorly equipped to care for them.

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