Overworked, Underpaid. Had Some Good People.
Pros
I used to work at Suncrest in Sacramento up until recently. I love hospice, and I loved the work, and the people. They used to have a knack for hiring passionate, caring folks, and inspiring them to throw their all into hospice care. The culture was great for the beginning of the time period I was there, which is why I was willing to be a bit underpaid for my position. The work load was also reasonable. More superficial pros include free lunches, occasional giveaways, and some great people working there.
Cons
One thing I will note, is that new hires, and employees in general, are offered a bonus to leave a 5 star review on various sites. So please be aware of this. As for the company, unfortunately, as time went on, people started leaving Suncrest, and were never replaced. We lost 2 ADONs who helped manage admissions and aides, 2 admissions nurses (we only hired one to replace despite a higher patient census,) we lost several RN case managers that weren't replaced. Caseload were very high. At the peak, I think I had 18 patients, our aides had something like 20ish I think. RNCMs' promised max load was 12. The workload was near impossible. There were days that I would see 6-7 patients during the work day, do an admission, and be up until midnight getting my charting done. Then I would be back at it again at 8:30am. Despite having staff leaving, management/corporate would continue trying to bring on more patients, and celebrate as we passed milestones for how many patients we had. I think a lot of people have good intentions at Suncrest, however I think many folks there get blinded by numbers and profit, and the "common folk" suffer from that. I have met some of the best people in this career field at Suncrest who are truly in it for the work, but also a lot who are here for just the paycheck and the big digit census. If you choose to work at Suncrest, please be careful and make sure to put yourself first, your patients second, and then everything else can find a place after that. If you don't like it, please don't think all hospice is this way, and feel free to give another place a go. I did and don't regret it. Also, side note - my yearly raise was I think a dollar and 20 ¢.
