Intermountain Health reviews

Working at Intermountain Health For those who take the time to read this review, I really appreciate it. I genuinely don’t like to be a “troll” and try to refrain from getting buried in negativity, and usually don’t leave reviews unless I’m truly impressed or really dissatisfied. I like to be honest, and occasionally blunt when the situation calls for it, and this is one of those times that I feel that laying down all the cards on the table will be beneficial for those considering working at Intermountain Health. I apologize for the length of the review, but I want to be thorough and show as full a picture as possible of what life is like at Intermountain Health. I did have to remove a part of it, or heavily edit parts, due to Glassdoor not allowing certain parts of it that they said violated their guidelines. However there was nothing vulgar or profane, no trade secrets exposed (everything mentioned previously was public knowledge), and no aggressive or discriminatory language. I suspect someone didn’t agree with my views, so I have edited my review heavily. Read between the lines where you can. I’ll attempt to base my review on facts, observations, and conversations I’ve had with dozens upon dozens of employees, but my personal feelings on the matter will be evident and impossible to contain. I won’t hide that fact, but will still try to include examples to back my claims. I have worked at Intermountain a long time. I’ve given a good portion of my life to this company, so I hope my insights of what I have seen over the years create some sort of validation for my review. I’ll separate by topic, just in case you’d like to skip to a certain section, depending on what is important to you. Overall When I started at Intermountain many years ago, things were very different. Better than now, in almost every way. Back then our teams were able to get things done quickly, efficiently, and we had amazing rapport with our fellow caregivers. Changes are always inevitable, as I understand that laws, leadership changes, market changes, etc. necessitate some changes along the way. I won’t argue that. Change can be tough, but I generally can adapt better than most. Small changes at first were easily adaptable as new leaders came in, or other external and internal decisions demanded changes, like a lot of centralization. Even though the work environment changed quite a bit over the next few years, and some of it was tough, nothing could prepare us for what was up next. A new CEO arrived 7 or 8 years ago and shook things up. Chaos ensued. Workers went months without knowing what their job was or to whom they reported (I wish I were joking). People were let go. Many leaders and physicians quit as his changes were drastic and uncalled for. Even board members strongly disapproved of his actions. Large departments were outsourced. Fear reigned. Everything changed forever. And in many cases, not for the better. During this time frame we were implementing a new system used in Healthcare. It was a nightmare to be a part of Intermountain at this time, and hearing any type of good news was just a dream. From an executive leadership level, I’m sure they compiled whatever stats and reports they could to assure the community, the board, and themselves that everything was great and “better.” But from comments from published articles of local news organizations, and discussions happening all across the organization, this was far from the truth. Sure, there were those who buttered up to leadership for various reasons of their own. Morale was at an all-time low across teams. Leaders pointed to their caregiver surveys at the time stating otherwise, but from what we’ve learned, many caregivers just give high marks so they and their teams didn’t have to do extra work, which usually meant coming up with plans to address low scores (many of which they couldn’t do anything about the scores to begin with, because the low scores addressed things outside of the control of their teams). That was more rampant than I had imagined after talking to several clinical and non-clinical teams. In the end, caregivers didn’t think things could get much worse, so we all just kept going, one step at a time, hoping things would improve. But reality hit hard. At the end of 2020, there were encouraged retirements, and when there weren’t enough people leaving, additional people were let go. Most of us understood that trimming the fat can be a good thing in some ways, especially during that time, but it got so bad that they were trimming a lot more than fat. Not only that, but in in 2020 were we dealing with a pandemic-style world, and the craziness that ensues in a healthcare environment during such an event. We didn’t get a break. Many of us were onsite every single day during the whole thing. And people were uncertain about their future at the company. And if we stayed, mental and physical wellbeing a major concern for us all, as we were (and are continually) asked to do more and more with no relief in sight for more resources. Sure, they’ll point to a few examples where that isn’t the case, but those are the extreme exceptions, not the rule. Fast forward to our current world of 2024 where we’ve had even more people let go this year. We’ve been asked to support more and more with fewer or the same number of resources. Little things that helped with morale…poof. Nowhere to be seen. It’s like the joy has been sucked out of working here. That may seem a small thing, but when you are continually asked to do more, with no additional help, and sometimes you don’t even get a “thank you”…well, that hurts. Their gratitude seems nothing but hollow. People are overworked and instead of getting help, we just keep getting asked to continue to tighten our belts, be grateful, and get it done. For example, I know of a certain team handed a massive project on top of their normal jobs. A team that is spread throughout the organization and severely strained for resources. Leadership promised them additional resources, but went back on that promise. Many have been forced to put in a lot of overtime for months now, some of them salaried so they don’t even get the extra pay. Now they’re even more tired, stressed, and overworked. Just before the old CEO left, he started the process of merging with another healthcare system. Integrating for both systems has been a nightmare. To sum up the general overall experience, Intermountain Health used to be the premier place in Utah to work. People were proud to be a part of this place. Their overall mission, goals, and dedication to the community were and continue to be admirable. But now those goals now have a cost to our caregivers (more of which I’ll cover in different sections) and it has taken its toll. We have lost a lot of knowledge and wisdom by losing some amazing people due to the direct result of decisions from high leadership. Hearing good news is still a rarity, and when we do get it, usually the good news is only for a certain group of people, which means only good news for some. But they focus on that and don’t even acknowledge those it doesn’t affect, ignoring their concerns completely. As I said, Intermountain Health used to be an amazing place to work. But based on decisions over the last 7/8 years, it has just become an average place to work, at best. Leadership Like most companies out there, I think executive leadership is a major problem with a serious disconnect from their frontline caregivers and reality. I completely understand their job is to see larger pictures (based on their role), but sometimes even a military general needs to visit and work the trenches to fully grasp the entire picture, rather than plan from afar. And I’m not talking about a fake visit where people bend over backwards to put on a good show when someone from on high visits. I’m talking about having them visit the trenches and sitting down with real caregivers from all facilities, multiple departments (both clinical and non-clinical) and have serious open discussions without fear of retribution, doing the actual work, and understanding what actually happens on the floor. I will be fair in that I sincerely believe our current leadership is making great efforts to attempt to reach caregivers who report through various meetings. They offer the option to ask questions, and I will give them respect for opening it for all questions, even tough questions. However, most of their answers feel forced, or not genuine. Like we’re hearing from a robot, AI, or they’re giving us HR talking points that they seem to love so much. It’s like we’re talking to politicians. In other words, they answer questions by saying a lot with no real substance and not really answering the questions, or using a lot of buzzwords and corporate speak to sideline a real response. Which is sad. Most of us just want to have a real conversation. No political-type responses. Just real, non-prepared responses, no talking points, just the straight up truth. Even if it hurts. From leadership meetings I’ve attended, they imply that part of leading is delivering bad news in a way that you avoid substantive discussions and rather stick to their talking points, making sure decisions are accepted regardless. It feels like concerns and questions we escalate from our teams in these situations are never truly addressed. So, although there have been some great strides with leadership working on communication issues in the company, they have a lot of work still to do to earn our trust and improve our workplace. But that is the crux of it all. Low confidence in executive leadership seems to be a problem across the board. Those of us in the trenches keep getting bad news as we continue to “standardize” and “optimize” as they love to say. We feel like they hear us, to an extent, but don’t want to listen. Some of us have noticed that some of them believe as long as we think we’re heard, we are then pacified. But the reality is, we feel pandered to, like children, and they smile and nod, but afterward shake their heads and our concerns don’t really matter. Pay and Benefits Having a purpose, believing in the company, making a difference, and several other factors are important for keeping people and reducing turnover. But at any company, pay and benefits are what bring a lot of us in (especially in current poor economic times) and keep us happy enough to stay. Having said that, Intermountain Health’s current strategy around “optimization” and “standardization” between the two merged organizations has caused major concerns. Granted, some of this started even before the two were merging, but now the strategy is on overload. Intermountain used to strive to hire the best and brightest, and would offer a fantastic pay and benefits package to match. Not amazing, by any means, but definitely better than average. However, they have recently endeavored to back pedal and divest in their offerings. Leadership and HR strive to provide a “middle of the road” package that is just average and on par with or less than what several other companies offer. But they still want to recruit the best, by offering middle of the road “market” pay and benefits. When confronted on these issues, they pull out prepared talking points filled with buzzwords and non-sensical fillers that don’t address the actual concerns of the caregivers. When asked specifics, they only provide political non-answers, side-step the actual question(s), pivot, redirect, or try and tell us how good we have it, and that we should just be grateful. Then they take away more benefits, or give horrendous pay increases, and the cycle continues, when all we want is a straight answer with some honesty for once. To be fair, we are grateful for what we have. We always have been. But when someone keeps taking more and more away from you, little by little, and then uses the tired argument of “it’s for the greater good” of the organization, or presenting some new benefit that only helps a small minority of caregivers, and focusing on that, it’s hard to stay positive. And then leaders seem like robots and don’t really even acknowledging the hurt, anger, fear, and other emotions that come from the removal of benefits, and instead spoon feed us talking points which only focus on small wins rather than the big losses and what they’re going to do to help. Let me provide some examples of all of this. Without going into too many details, Intermountain used to provide some amazing medical coverage. Costs are so high now, that attempting to afford even the cheapest plan is becoming impossible. I know healthcare costs are rising across the board, and leaders have been asked what they were doing to address the root of the problem, both short term and long term. Because skyrocketing costs aren’t sustainable. But again, non-answers filled with political jargon are given, meant to side-step the question which was never answered. They’ve also implemented new costs for benefits that forced many to drop spouses from their plans. To be blunt, as healthcare costs rise across the board, Intermountain continues to use the caregivers to carry the burden of extra costs of healthcare rather than raise prices to consumers. Pay is another example. From recent reports I’ve read, the average family needs to make an additional $11,000 a year to have the same purchasing power as 4 years ago. With inflation at an all time high, and feeling the pinch, Intermountain’s increase structure hasn’t kept pace with inflation. I know that’s across the board, but companies always say market is behind inflation. But after 4 years of terrible increases, caregivers are truly struggling. They also delay increases on a cycle. Meaning the month that increases are given are often postponed for several months. This has happened many times over the years. One area that I will give them praise for was how much PTO we could accumulate and rollover each year. Although, that has gone down big time in the last several years. But I won’t complain too much about that, as it’s nice to carry over hours, except to say that again, they played the “let’s do what others are doing” card so they can be just as good as those in the middle of the pack. No better, no worse. That doesn’t seem like an attitude you’d want for a company that wants to bring on the best people but only offer what everyone else does. We just hope they don’t make a poor decision in the future to decrease the amount of PTO we receive each year. Culture This section I had to edit heavily and couldn’t speak for myself or my team, apparently. So I’ll be extremely brief. The culture at Intermountain is two-faced. On one side of the coin we have what is advertised to the world, both to the communities we serve as well as to potential hires. I’m not a very political person, but I have noticed they tend to be very welcoming of certain pollical persuasions. On the other side of that coin is anyone who doesn’t fit their political mold. If you’re on that side of the coin, you feel uncomfortable speaking up, having an opinion (even a mild, non-combative opinion), and being part of the Intermountain community as a whole. You’re almost ostracized. In other words, their intention to include everyone has backfired a bit, and forced many to feel as if they don’t belong. That shouldn’t be offensive, or against guidelines to say, so hopefully this makes it through.