--There's no connectivity between the main office, in Chicago, and Providence. It is blatantly remote and many of us felt "out of the loop."
--Senior management was very manipulative
As a college student, I walked into the company, ready to learn. At the time, the two managers who interviewed me were very impressed with my resume and wanted to bring me on board. I was excited about working in the healthcare inudstry, because it was something new to me. Unfortunately, I didn't know how dramatic my experience here would be.
Our managers were very cheap. As site leads of the revenue cycle, both managers were to oversee operations in the Patient Financial Services department as well as the cashier's office. With Accretive being a company known to manage hospitals' revenue cycles, you would think all areas, regarding cash inflow and revenue would be running like a well-oiled machine. The cashier's office was operated by only ONE individual. Even worse, the cashier's office had primitive phones: the corded kind, with NO caller ID, no option to open multiple lines, nor was there an option to put the calls on hold. Now, this may seem irrelevant, but you have to look at the big picture. What company have you ever called has asked you to hold and simply placed the phone on the table? If the cashier was on the phone with the patient and another was trying to get through so he/she could remit a payment, the call would bounce back. That rebounded call would then go back to the Patient Financial Services department, where the front desk receptionist would catch a lot of flack for issues she nor the cashier had any control over. I cannot count how many times we requested a new phone for that office, for it would only ease the tension between the angry patients and the stressed out staff. Needless to say, our managers didn't care about the cash inflow to that respect, because the patients continued to call about the same issue.
On another note, Accretive is a cheap company... PERIOD... They do outsourcing with Medical Financial Solutions. If I'm not mistaken, they're currently in Kalamazoo but is in the process of being transferred to India. Anyway, the patients can see that there's no synchronization between the Chicago office, MFS headquarters, and Providence Hospital. How??? Well, at one point MFS was sending Providence patients a notice saying that if they paid their statement in full, then a 15% discount would automatically be applied to the account. Patients would call the hospital, and none of us had any idea that this had been implemented. No one but the managers knew, and they decided to not tell us.
I'm not even going to continue about how ridiculous, poorly trained, and incompetent the Accretive managers, leading the Providence site, are. I don't know about how anyone else's Accretive experience is elsewhere, but I can tell you that I have hated the past year that I've been employed by this company. I was happy to be terminated, because it just wasn't worth the mental stress everyday.
I'm an accounting major with a strong IT background and I was told that I would be helping work on all of these projects and help implement new ideas for a new intern program and the likes. The most difficult thing I ever did was organize a spreadsheet. I felt like wasted talent: I saw people come in MONTHS after me and get promoted to "management"-like positions. I just wanted growth and a chance to learn. Clearly, they work on a FIFO employment basis: First In, First Out... I was the first intern there, with the most skills and credentials, and they didn't like that I knew about what was going on. I would watch our mangers lie to patients, EMPLOYEES, and even the nuns who worked at the hospital. I mean, Accretive should really be ashamed of the people who they have managing this site.
Management is very inconsistent with their implementation of policies and you can tell that favoritism exists. Furthermore, I definitely think there was a strong racial barrier in our office. Both of our team leads are Anglo-Saxon, our Providence senior analyst is of Indian descent, one member is Asian, and the rest were African-American. On many occasions, some of us felt like we were being talked down to, as if we were stupid or didn't "understand" what was being said the first time. I've worked for aerospace & defense government contractors, the city government, and an investment capital firm. Not once have I experienced the type of disrespect, ignorance, and lack of leadership skills that these two possess. Accretive seems like they've got it together in the midwest; now, it's time to really implement a SERIOUS management program before you put financial health and volatility in the hands of inexperienced individuals.
