Health Catalyst reviews

3.4

45% would recommend to a friend

(780 total reviews)
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Ben Albert

Not enough data to show CEO approval

24% positive business outlook

Health Catalyst has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 780 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Health Catalyst employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Healthcare industry (3.4 stars).

Reviews by job title

780 reviews
3.0
Mar 3, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good pay, good benefits, good coworkers

Cons

At Health Catalyst, only the people managers get annual performance reviews. If you are an individual contributor you don't get any kind of formal review. This is totally ironic. We're an outcomes improvement company and we consult with our clients about how they are supposed to continually monitor their performance and implement interventions to improve. But we don't follow our own advice. How are our people supposed to learn and grow and get better if they don't set goals and check in regularly with their managers on those goals?

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Health Catalyst Response
5y
Thanks for your review and feedback. We encourage people managers to have 1:1s with team members every two weeks, and to have a continuous discussion about the team member's performance and what is going well as well as opportunities for development and improvement. We have also found it useful to gather annual 360-degree performance feedback on our people managers, and as we've found this to be helpful, we are extending this practice of annual performance feedback, in a more formalized manner, to all team members, starting in 2021. We hope that this addition will address your feedback and be helpful to you and to many other team members in their ongoing growth and development. Best, Dan
3.0
Mar 12, 2019

The wheels are starting to fall off

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Health Catalyst employs many smart, nice, and talented people. It gives employees the ability to work from home so there is a diverse workforce across the nation. The pay is pretty good and the company hosts get togethers throughout the year. Additionally, there are some budget for office equipment and a system that encourages healthy lifestyle choices.

Cons

I never thought I'd have any critical comments about Health Catalyst. There have been some recent organizational changes that have seemingly tossed aside Catalyst's zeal for helping customers and building relationships in pursuit of the billable hour. Employees in professional services are expected to bill clients for 80% of their time. This has created a convoluted system in which employees are expected to predict the amount of hours they'll work at a client over a period of time. In other words, predict the future. There's confusion around what kind of work can and can't be billed and who it should be billed to or if it should be "spread around". Some teams are resorting to tribalism tactics, paranoia, hoarding, and even intimidation to protect their hours. I now live in a constant state of fear to "get to 80% client utilization."

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Health Catalyst Response
7y
I want to sincerely thank you for sharing this feedback and for writing this review. I'm also really grateful for your contributions to the company's success for more than three years. I have read and reread your review several times, and want you to know that as I've considered your feedback, I sense the sincerity of your intent, to help the company stay true to its mission. I also find the tension that you highlight to be very real and relevant to us as we move forward. I also want you to know that I've spent multiple hours, engaged in direct dialogue with the most senior leaders of the professional services organization, including Tom Burton, Mike Doyle and Brant Avondet, on the topic you've raised around billable hours and its relationship to our mission and our focus on team member engagement. First I would share with you the belief that this is a topic we must stay vigilant and focused on -- we will never be "finished" with this topic, because it will require constant balancing and rebalancing between two competing, but long-term critical elements. The first is the mission of the company, and the central driving force in accomplishing the mission being team member engagement. That is my #1 priority as CEO and I encourage every leader and manager at Health Catalyst to view this as their top priority, because it is at the center of the flywheel and it enables us to accomplish our mission. But this has to be balanced against financial sustainability and scalability as well. This is where we are striving to find that right balance, and seeking to set a target for utilization of around 30 hours per week, on average, to achieve this sustainability, giving our clients a solid value for the work they ask us to perform, while also providing enough time for our team members to 'sharpen the saw' with the time above and beyond the average 30 hour a week longer-term objective. We also try to stay balanced in keeping the utilization objective as a good longer-term guideline, but to allow for short-term deviations to enable vacation time, holidays, unplanned situations, etc. But it is a tricky, ongoing balance and tension to manage. I know that our professional services leaders are focused on striving to achieve this balance, and that they are actively, consistently working towards this balance. I would invite you to visit with me or with any of these senior leaders to share more of your perspective, and ensure that we are understanding your experience deeply. I once again really appreciate your daily work, your contributions to the company's mission, and remain committed to striving to strike the right balance, and keep iterating to enable your experience to be sustainable, positive and engaging as a best place to work. Best, Dan
5.0
Dec 14, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I love working at Health Catalyst. Overall the nicest group of people I've worked with. Ability to work remotely, competitive pay, stock options, education reimbursement, and numerous other smaller perks. Meaningful work and a variety of clients & projects keeps things interesting. Senior management is transparent and approachable.

Cons

As other reviews have mentioned, our platform is out of touch with customer needs. When people communicate needs & pain points, it takes YEARS to see improvements in the products (if they ever occur). In a previous job I saw these kinds of issues addressed in months. It's very frustrating to see other features added before basic functionality that many people-- both clients and employees-- are constantly asking for. Sometimes the tools even get in the way of data analysis, which is the exact opposite of what they should be doing. There are too many artificial restrictions/limitations that require tedious workarounds. It's very disheartening to hear these frustrations voiced over and over from clients. I worry that some of our fundamental products are dragging us down, and I think they should be completely overhauled or even done away with, but they seem so ingrained in our way of doing things that we can't see past them.

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Health Catalyst Response
7y
Thank you for this review and feedback, and thank you for filling the critical role of Technical Director at Health Catalyst. Thank you also for more than five years of contributions to the company's growth and success. I agree with your perspective of the need to balance optimism with a realistic sense of the challenges that we face, and I agree that we have some real challenges relative to our data platform, which we will focus on in 2019. Platform stability and utilization are two of our company's top priorities and areas of focus for 2019, and rightly so. And instilling a "business/P&L" mindset in every one of our solution areas, including the platform, where our leaders run their solution areas as a business, with a real need to ensure that clients are delighted with the features and functionality and usefulness of their solutions, is another significant area of focus for 2019. We will discuss these areas of focus in tomorrow's All Team Member meeting. Thank you for reinforcing the importance of these areas of focus, and thank you again for more than five years of contributions to the company! Best, Dan
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