Pros
Not a single thing. The pay maybe??? It’s not awful.
Cons
Okay so grab a chair because this is going to be a long one.. Agape’s Corporate is trying to grow their company too fast. They are admitting too many patients in the South Carolina Greenville, Clemson, and Greenwood areas for the staff to keep up with. I left this company for 2 main reasons. 1. They do not have the resources they need to provide for patients. Let me elaborate…. So most Hospices have something called “Continuous Care”. This involves a team of LPNs or CNAs that are solely called in when there is a symptom that needs to be managed. Continuous care is crucial because symptoms can’t be managed in an hour visit. Symptom management is around the clock. Medicare reimburses hospices for providing these services to patients and families. Typically continuous care staff will do 12 hour shifts. LPNs usually pull shifts in the homes, the CNAs in the ALFs or nursing homes (because there are already nurses for medication administration in the facilities). Agape care tells these families “we do not use continuous care because we have hospice houses for your loved ones to go to if they need a higher level of care that short term visits cannot provide.” WHAT THEY NEGLECT TO TELL THE FAMILIES UPON ADMITTING THEM IS THAT THEY ONLY HAVE 5 HOSPICE HOUSES IN THE ENTIRE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. So this means that the family has 3 choices: keep their loved one at home with no symptom management, admit them to the hospital for a hospice contract bed, or send them 3 hours away to the nearest hospice house. AGAPE CARE YOU CANNOT TELL FAMILIES THAT YOU ARE “With them” OR THAT YOU WILL “help their loved ones die at home with comfort” and then turn around and send them to the hospital. It defeats the purpose of hospice. It is unethical. Most of your patients in the outlying rural counties live too far away from your precious hospice houses to benefit from them. You need to hire a team of continuous care staff for each branch that is too far from a hospice house. Don’t tell me you can’t afford it. MEDICARE REIMBURSES YOU FOR IT! This is either blatant corporate greed or just plain stupidity. It’s laughable. 2. The second reason I left was the lack of work life balance. They expect their week day nurses (who mind you are salaried 9 to 5) to also work on call in the evenings. So for example, if you work Monday through Friday you are also expected to work Tuesday nights into Wednesday morning AND STILL BE EXPECTED TO WORK ALL OF WEDNESDAY. I know a few other hospice companies that do this and it works out okay…but the problem with the Greenwood branch is that it covers 7 COUNTIES…that means a nurse could very well have to drive out 3 hours to visit a patient, be there for two hours, then have to drive 3 hours back. Even when she gets back home she’s still on call, and very well may have to venture back out. Even after she pulled a full 8 hour shift the day prior, and has another 8 hour to go back to the next day! In general, Hospice nurses DRIVE FOR A LIVING. We don’t sit at a desk all day. You cannot expect us to see patients and drive for 32 hours straight. We will crash our cars. We are not firefighters with a whole team to assist us. Agape care puts one nurse on call for multiple counties and thinks that is okay. When we are on call we are one person. Single. Alone. You are not “with us”. That on call pay doesn’t even equate to time and a half. Not even close. There are also no admissions nurses either. Everyone does their own 4 hour admissions. If you get two admissions in a night that you are on call….you bet every penny you are up all night long. This company is an absolute scam and needs to be investigated by Medicare and maybe even OSHA. They drive nurses into the ground. They do not take care of patients and families. They’re an absolute disgrace.
