FY22 Special Pay Plans Released
Here’s the message from the Medical Corps Chief’s Office and plans:
The special pays program manager highlighted changes from last year in yellow. This year’s pay plan includes several increases in incentive pay, specialty pays, and a return of all the previous four and six-year retention bonuses.
-Requests, with CO endorsements, dated between 11 Feb 22 – 11 Mar 22, and requesting an effective date as far back as 1 Oct 21, will not require to be retroactive; however, any request/CO endorsement dated 12 Mar 22 or later will have to be retroactive.
-BUMED Special Pays webpage https://www.med.navy.mil/Special-Pays/ will be updated as soon as possible.
-Contact your local special pays representative with processing questions
Note: The pay plan is a continuous evolution. Each of the services’ pay plans are based on the DoD pay plan, and the pay planning cycles are not aligned with the budgeting process. For example, the FY21 NDAA that authorized increases in Board Certification Pay was signed after the FY22 DoD Pay Planning and FY23 DoD Budget planning were in progress. To that end, it can take up to two years after legislation for NDAA changes to be considered, budgeted, and published in our special pay plans. RDML Hancock has an article that explains this in detail in our MC winter magazine that I’ll send out next week.
Your pay is a top priority, and the Medical Corps Chief’s Office will continue to advocate for maximum pays whenever possible!
Joel Schofer's Career Planning Blog 
February 12, 2022 at 12:45
While I appreciate that it takes a few years to incorporate the NDAA increases into a budget request, why is there no increase for inflationary changes in any of these? General surgery and it looks like many others have had IP frozen since FY17, so is not only not increasing but has lost value approaching 13% since that time and will get a lot worse with the current financial environment we have.
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February 12, 2022 at 15:31
We have had that discussion every year for the last 3 years, and the majority of people at the DoD level who govern these special pays do not believe these pays should be inflation adjusted. As you might suspect, I/we do not agree with them.
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February 13, 2022 at 02:51
The message from the Corps Chief’s Office says that the plan includes several increases in incentive pay.
I cannot find a single specialty that had an increase in incentive pay from FY21 to FY 22.
In fact, I cannot find a single specialty that has had an increase in incentive pay since the change to Consolidated Pays in FY2017.
I looked in the Dental Corps, MSC and NC Guidance as well and did not see any incentive pay increases there. Am I missing something?
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February 13, 2022 at 05:41
No, you are not missing anything. The message from the Corps Chief’s office was not my message. I just cut/pasted it.
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February 14, 2022 at 23:16
CAPT Schofer,
Sir, has the Navy considered providing other benefits to make up for the pay disparity with our civilian counterparts since it seems unlikely for pays to increase in the near future?
-Increase in Leave days earned per year.
-No Cost TAD for moonlighting instead of using leave or working more shifts/month for skill maintenance
-Increasing dwell time
-Incorporating training days in the field or away from home station as part of dwell time or create a separate training dwell time
-Hiring civilians to help with staffing levels of MTFs, especially with deployments of staff during covid to civilian centers
-Making IP (and/or RB) an allowance
-Provide yearly allowance for medical education and conferences
-Allow for Navy to match 5% of total pay (save and base) in BRS
-Increase Promotion percentages
-Decrease years until in zone (or make automatic promotion to O4 and O5 based on time served)
V/R,
CDR Rob Oldt
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February 15, 2022 at 18:27
No serious discussion I’m aware of for most things on your list. Some of the things you mention are always under consideration (civilian hires, promotion percentages – O6 was just 95%, the max allowed), but many would point to the GI Bill, current tax free allowances, and pension as things that already partially make up for the pay difference. If you read the GAO report about military pay discrepancies, they call it non-cash incentives, I believe – https://mccareer.org/2020/01/19/gao-dod-should-collect-and-use-key-information-to-make-decisions-about-incentives-for-physicians-and-dentists/
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February 16, 2022 at 21:01
How do these pays generally apply to the deployed/activated reservist. Are they the eligible for BCP?
Incentive pay?
Any serious discussions involving reserve pay when activated to appeal to recruitment given the long Navy deployments and interruption in civilian practices for medical providers, especially those that are considered critical wartime specialties?
I can’t find this information anywhere that lays this out plainly. Any insight would be very helpful.
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February 17, 2022 at 19:51
I believe you are only eligible for Incentive Pay (search for the term “Reserve” to find the appropriate sections in the MC pay plan, but I’d contact CAPT Marley, the Reserve Affairs Officer, to double check. If you need her contact info, let me know.
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