Express Scripts reviews

Leadership Problem Desired company values set forth by management is in-congruent to actual work directives. On one hand, management asks us to do what is best for our Members. On the other hand, they ask us to do what is best for our Clients. Then there's the need to generate revenue for the company. If you know anything about insurance industry, this is fundamentally conflicting mandates that cannot be reconciled. Between Clients, Members, and Express Scripts, only 2 out of 3 parties can be happy at any given point. Despite the management mantra, our current business model disincentivizes us from doing what is best for our members and clients because disproportionate amount of the company profit is tied to script volume. The more sick our members are, higher the script volume, and more money Express Scripts make. We are a one-trick pony. Wall Street-consumption-ready sound bite about our diversified revenue streams is largely a farce. It doesn't matter if the revenue sources are evenly split between specialty drugs, mail order, service fees, and rebates if the size of the overall pie is completely dependent on the script volume. This is not true diversification. For true diversification and script-agnostic growth strategy, the company needs think outside the box it is trapped in, and invest in innovative strategies and people. On the surface the company has been trying to be position itself as all-in-one, benefits management company, pharmacy, healthcare provider, and research institution. But it is failing in all of them. Take the Big Data opportunity as an example. As a PBM, we are sitting on mountains of empirical data about members, providers, treatment, and outcome. We are not using them to drive growth in meaningful ways, because we are willfully ignoring data points that can improve member outcome and lower costs, but that can potentially reduce script volume. Instead, the big data is being used mostly for client marketing purpose (a.k.a Express Scripts Lab) and cut operating expenses, rather than meaningfully growing top-line. Pay problem. The current HR compensation structure and performance management system are designed to attract and retain mediocrity. Many good people have already left and we are left with smart, but sour staff who've been chronically underpaid, and now even more sour than ever. Paying market rate salary is not going to work with Express Scripts. In order to attract and retain good talent, the company needs to be paying above market rate. When you have a problem that can easily be solved by literally throwing more money at it, you say "thank you" and start throwing cash. After the merger, management significantly reduced options and RSUs for middle managers and top talents to the point of insult. Long term incentive is a key strategy in retaining top talents. IT-pocalypse The company suffers from weak IT leadership, particularly at Sr. Director level and above. We are in a sore need to recruit highly competent, bold, leaders from a proven technology company to clean up the disastrous IT foundations that are root of cause of many project failures and hindrance to new initiatives. The current leadership positions are all occupied by 50 something year old males or (30-40 year old females) with dubious technical skills who think going 'agile' is as easy as saying abracadabra and its utterance alone provides magical 30% productivity boost. News Flash: Express Scripts is not set up for agile, and to its fairness, most large companies are not either. What the company needs is a new IT visionary and his/her lieutenants that will stand up to the senior management and call spade a spade, but smart enough to recognize when the lower level staff is serving turd sandwiches with PB&J. Organizational culture and structure problem. There is culture of business-worship that results in gross mis-allocation of resources. There are literally hundreds of directors on the business side with no direct reports while other department directors have to manage staff of half a dozen to hundreds. And the ugly truth is, we have some of the weakest and woefully under-qualified business and product owners I have seen in my career. And in order to 'serve' business needs better, management inserted liaison roles between business and IT called them "BAT" or "BIAC"; roles that were traditionally performed by business analysts and project managers. In theory, this specialization of roles sounds like a good idea from resource management perspective. In practice, it results in IT project managers who are effectively clueless about the details of the projects they are managing, business analysts whose roles have been marginalized, and across the board staff bloat.

I spent nearly a decade working for Express Scripts, which made it a very difficult decision when I recently left the company. For most of those years, things weren't bad (although there were certainly were frustrations). However, the culture has become very, very sour after the Medco merger 2 years ago, and good people have been leaving in droves ever since. The internal politics at the company have gotten so thick that it is nearly impossible to get anything done. On one hand, you have the legacy ESI folks, many of whom have grown up with the company. On the other hand, you have the legacy Medco folks who remain resentful that their company got bought, and who seem to have an unhealthy distrust for anything coming out of St. Louis. The two companies continue to operate under the ESI umbrella, and they both have some representation in leadership. The sad part is, that the two sides don't cooperate at all, and tend to sabotage each other at every opportunity. Cooperation is rare, and senior leadership doesn't force either side to compromise or take direction. If you come up with a better way of doing things at ESI, it will be fully your responsibility to convince *everyone* in the east and the west that the change needs to happen. Unfortunately, this is an impossible task due to the amount of red tape involved, and the ongoing divide between the legacy companies. From an IT perspective, this means that their technology stack is completely antiquated, and there is little hope of moving the company forward. This also leads to a situation where nearly everyone believes that the company doesn't value them at all, and it has become incredibly difficult to do a good job and make things better, even if you want to. This unfortunately leads to a situation where very few people work hard at all, and almost nothing ever gets done. All of this frustration has led to an environment where a sense of discontent permeates through the hallways. Behind closed doors, most employees have very little respect for the company or for senior leadership, and things seem to only be getting worse. When surrounded by such negativity day after day, it really starts to affect your mood and outlook, even when you aren't working. To make matters worse, many talented people have already left the company, and because of a sour reputation around town, replacing them with talented individuals has become nearly impossible. From a culture perspective, there is virtually none at ESI. Very few people get together outside of the office, and the only company get-togethers are formulaic employee-only lunches (one in the winter, one in the summer), where drinking is prohibited and families aren't invited. The St. Louis offices are in a terrible part of town, and most people look forward to leaving the area as quickly as possible after the work day.