- Low Pay: They do market analyses every few years and aim to pay us just lower than the 50th percentile, which is already lame. However since Intermountain is king in Utah they essentially set what that mean is. So they are basically able to keep pay low and artificially deflate the average that they aim to match. If you go to one of the other healthcare systems in Utah you will get a significant amount more per hour. Also they used to tout that the benefits made up for the pay, but i don’t think employees feel that is true anymore.
- Declining culture of intermountain at large: You probably get the picture from all the other reviews. Yes, we got a new CEO about a year ago and ever since it seems like there is less of a close-knit community feel to our hospitals and work environment. Less respect and gratitude for front-line staff, less listening to employees, more micro-management, and more budget cuts that affect FTEs involved in direct patient care - which is a huge safety concern.
- Declining culture within Pharmacy: There has been huge trickle down in the Declining culture and morale from CEO Marc Harrison to the Pharmacy departments. It feels like this started before he came, but the more rapid rate of decline has been felt by everyone since his arrival. It’s total mixed signals when management talks about championing advancing Pharmacy roles and commitment to medication and patient safety, yet the actions being taken are in direct opposition to these goals.
- “Benchmarking”. Ugh. What a disgusting buzz word that is right now. In keeping with the mixed signals mentioned above, Pharmacy upper management wants us to be first in class, yet they “benchmark” our FTEs to hospitals in other states that don’t provide the same services or level of care that intermountain Pharmacy has been doing. And then FTEs get cut because we are benchmarked against these lower-level hospitals? If you want world class care, it’s going to take a World class budget and staffing.
- Everything is being micro-managed from a corporate level in ways that don’t make sense. Some standardization is good and has made huge improvements; however everything is being needled and nit-picked from high rise towers and upper management is seeming more and more out of touch. Why have Pharmacy directors if you are going to micro manage daily operations, staffing, FTEs, budgets, inventory operations, etc etc? There is some great talent in lower level management at some sites but their ability to run things or make decisions seems almost non-existent now.
- Declining employee appreciation: The presence of being asked to do more with less has reached extreme levels. Some sites have pharmacy teams that band together and buoy each other up, but Some sites have cut-throat, toxic cultures of throwing coworkers under the bus. We are highly motivated, highly educated healthcare professionals and yet feel like we are being treated without respect or appreciation. The pharmacy department is losing great talent left and right. Recent implementation of standardized work schedules across the system that make no sense have really thrown people over the edge. Local hospitals have FTEs and budgets - Let them figure out the scheduling that makes most sense for their site within these parameters. Also when you implement huge changes that grossly affect the details of people’s lives you should be sensitive to that fact and recognize the human factor in what you’re doing. You can be transparent about the why and let people know you appreciate that you are turning their personal lives upside down with ridiculously short notice.
- It feels crazy to have gone into a profession where you are highly educated, residency trained, committed to the intermountain values and feel so demeaned, belittled, and unappreciated from upper management. Is this what we spent a decade of education and training for?
